
Glass S-V-^5 



IS I 

-Jl— 



Book « K &Z 
Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE TEMPLE 



•TV 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE TEMPLE 



BY 
LYMAN ABBOTT 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1909 

All rights reserved 



^ 



A*° ] 



V 



> 



*\* 



Copyright, 1909, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1909. 



NorfajootJ i^rws 

J. S. Cushing Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A.251 3 88 



PREFACE 

This volume is one of three volumes which 
make one book: "The Great Companion "; 
" The Other Room " ; " The Temple." They 
are not books of Theology; they are books of 
Religion. Religion is the life of God in the 
soul of man; Theology is what men have 
thought about that life. The object of these 
books is not to define, but to describe; not to 
defend, but to portray. 

The object of " The Great Companion " is 
to describe the Christian's faith in God. This 
faith is not an opinion; it is an experience. 
It is not the belief that there is a Great First 
Cause; it is personal acquaintance with an 
Infinite Father. It is an experience of the 
Friendliness of God. 

The object of "The Other Room" is not 



PREFACE 

to prove immortality, but to describe it. Faith 
in immortality is not belief in life after death; 
it is life now. It is not an opinion that the 
spirit will live after the body decays. It is 
a life untouched by disaster to the body. It 
is a habit of mind; the habit of looking on 
the things that are unseen and are eternal. 

The object of "The Temple" is not to 
expound the philosophies of either the psy- 
chologist or the physiologist. It is to describe 
human experience: as it is and as it ought 
to be; to interpret the laws both of the body 
and of the spirit. It is to describe human 
nature. 

The first volume portrays the Christian's 
faith in God; the second volume, his faith in 
life ; the third volume, his faith in man. 

All these books are interpretations. They 
claim no originality. They interpret the 
Bible, that is the treasured experience of de- 
vout souls. The spirit of the first is " Say 



vi 



PREFACE 

Our Father"; that of the second is "I give 

unto them Eternal Life"; that of the third 

is " Thou hast made him little lower than 

God, thou hast crowned him with glory and 

honor." 

LYMAN ABBOTT. 

The Knoll, 

corxwall-on-hudsox, new york, 

October, 1909. 



vu 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Body 1 

II. The Eye 9 

III. The Ear 17 

IV. The Ear 27 

V. The Tongue 39 

VI. The Hand 53 

VII. The Feet 65 

VIII. The Appetites .... o . 79 

IX. The Passions 93 

X. Imagination ...... 103 

XI. The Conscience . . . . .113 

XII. The Intuition 127 

XIII. The Reason 141 

XIV. Love 157 



IX 



I 

THE BODY 



THE TEMPLE 



THE BODY 

Know ye not that your body is a temple of a holy spirit 
which is in you, which ye have from God ? 

My God, I heard this day 
That none doth build a stately habitation 

But he that means to dwell therein. 

What house more stately hath there been 
Or can be, than is Man ? To whose creation 

All things are in decay. 

Since then, my God, thou hast 
So brave a Palace built, O dwell in it, 

That it may dwell with thee at last ! 

Till thou afford us so much wit 
That, as the world serve us, we may serve thee, 

And both thy servants be. 

— George Herbert. 

rTIHE body is a temple; in the temple 
dwells a spirit; this spirit came forth 
from God, is in the image of God, partakes 
the nature of God. "We are his offspring." 
How to keep the temple holy, that is, clean 

3 



THE TEMPLE 

and healthy; how to keep this spirit that 
dwells within the temple a worthy occupant 
and the spiritual master of the body, is the 
problem of life. To answer those two ques- 
tions would be to answer all the questions 
of religion; would be to solve all the prob- 
lems of life: the problem of the mother with 
her child, of the teacher with her pupil, of 
the citizen with the State, of the man of 
affairs in his affairs, of the individual with 
himself. Life is making men and women. 
To know how so to live as to help, not hin- 
der life, to make the result of its businesses, 
its conflicts, its temptations, a pure soul in a 
pure body, is to possess all knowledge and 
to achieve all success that is of worth, for 
all knowledge is to be measured by its con- 
tribution to life, and the end of all achieve- 
ment is character. 

A pure soul in a pure body. 

There are philosophers who would have 
us believe that there is no soul, only body; 
and there are philosophers who would have 
us believe that there is no body, only soul. 

4 



THE BODY 

But neither have ever succeeded in making 
any headway against the common experi- 
ence and the common sense of mankind. 
Whatever philosophy may say in the school- 
room, we all have to act in life as though 
both matter and spirit were realities. In 
vain the idealist assures us that the body is 
not; that all we know of matter is derived 
from our own consciousness; that for aught 
we know that consciousness is all ; that 
what we call life may be but a dream from 
which we shall presently awake to discover 
its unreality. The idealist, like his neigh- 
bors, hungers and eats food; is cold and 
seeks the fire. To him, as to his fellows, the 
rock is an impenetrable barrier, and he must 
tunnel it or climb over it or go around it. In 
vain the materialist assures us that the spirit 
is not; that consciousness is a material 
product of a material brain; that man is a 
machine and does as the forces within him 
and about him compel. 'We know we're 
free, and that's the end on't." The mate- 
rialist, like his neighbor, when he suffers 



THE TEMPLE 

wrong, feels indignation; when he does 
wrong, suffers remorse. And no argument 
of a philosopher avails to make him treat 
himself or his neighbor as a machine that 
merely needs repairing. When the careless 
chauffeur runs down a little child, the wrath 
of the materialist flames out against the 
chauffeur, not against the automobile. 

I am I. The body is the house in which 
I dwell. My body is a machine, a very deli- 
cate machine, whose subtle forces science is 
still engaged in studying with varying degrees 
of success. I am not a machine, but the 
master of the machine, in some measure the 
maker of the machine — maker of it as maker 
of the garden which nature and I unite in 
producing. The relations between me and 
my house are intimate — so intimate that 
the two make one earthly personality, as the 
serpent is one with his skin, though presently 
he will cast off his skin; as the bird is one 
with her feathers, though by and by she will 
lose them in moulting. If this spirit makes 
the body, this body also helps to make the 



THE BODY 

spirit. The eye and the ear receive impres- 
sions which minister to the life of the spirit; 
the spirit puts forth activities which minister 
to the life of the body. What corrupts the 
body degrades the spirit. This is what Paul 
means by the saying: "If any one destroys 
the temple of God, him God will destroy." 
God has so connected body and spirit, house 
and tenant, the temple and its divine in- 
habitant, that if the spirit corrupts the body, 
the body in turn corrupts the spirit; the ten- 
ant in destroying the house destroys himself. 
Health of body is not merely muscular 
strength. An athlete is not the perfect model. 
That is a truly healthy body which in all its 
parts is promptly, cordially, unquestioningly 
obedient to a noble tenant which dwells 
within. The bodily organs are like the in- 
struments in an orchestra, the spirit like the 
conductor; when each instrument plays as 
the conductor directs, life is harmonious. A 
healthy body is an obedient body; the eye 
sees w T hat the spirit bids it see; the ear hears 
what the spirit bids it hear; the hand does 

7 



THE TEMPLE 

what the spirit bids it do. But a healthy 
man is more than a healthy body. He is 
a healthy body obedient to a healthy spirit — 
that is, to a spirit obedient to the laws of God, 
which are the laws of health. If the body 
has an errant, lawless, or vicious master, it 
obeys to its own undoing and the undoing 
of its master. The laws of health are the 
laws of God. Obedience to the laws of 
health is obedience to God. Disobedience 
to the laws of health is disobedience to God. 
To know what are the laws of health — of 
body and of spirit, of the individual and of 
society, of human life and of the world we 
live in — this is the sum of all knowledge. 
To obey those laws is the whole of religion. 
In this volume it is my aim, as an interpreter 
of the Biblical writers, to point out some of 
the laws of health of both body and spirit, to 
interpret some of the counsels which those writ- 
ers have given us as to the right use of both 
body and spirit, some of the conditions which 
they have indicated of a healthy, that is holy, 
tenant, in a healthy, that is an obedient, body. 

8 



II 

THE EYE 



II 

THE EYE 

If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from 
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast 
into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and 
cast it from thee : for it is profitable that one of thy members 
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast 
into hell. 

r llHE eye receives impressions; the hand 
performs actions. Christ tells his dis- 
ciples that to receive an evil impression may 
be as sinful and as dangerous as to perform 
an evil action. 

This is not generally believed. We are 
accustomed to think of sin as doing some- 
thing sinful; to regard sin and wrongdoing 
as nearly synonymous expressions. To sin 
passively appears almost a contradiction in 
terms. Not so to Christ. We may sin in 
receiving impressions no less than in doing 
deeds. Sin is lawlessness. And law applies 

11 



THE TEMPLE 

to the eye as well as to the hand; to the 
organs which receive as well as to the organs 
which act. To look on a neighbor's watch 
and desire to transfer it to one's own pocket 
is to be a thief; to look on a woman to lust 
after her is to be an adulterer; to look on an 
enemy with desire to take vengeance on him 
is to be a murderer. To desire evil is to be 
evil; and the evil eye inspires the evil desire. 
We are made by the impressions we receive 
and the actions we perform; and not less by 
the impressions than by the actions. Man 
may be compared to a phonograph that 
gives back to the ear the impressions which 
have been received and recorded upon the 
plate within. Or to a photographic plate 
that receives an invisible impression from 
the outside world, which, after it has been 
fixed in the bath, is given back to the world 
again. "The whole nervous system," says 
Dr. W. H. Thomson, "in every animal, man 
included, is first organized by habit. Physi- 
ologists, when they speak of nerve-centres 
being organized to perform such and such 

12 



THE EYE 

functions, mean, not that the nerve-centres 
have been created so from the beginning, 
but that habit has so organized them. But 
the important principle to bear in mind is 
that it is the segment of the nervous system 
which is acted upon by stimuli from the out- 
side world which is the ultimate source of 
this great fashioner of the nervous system, 
Habit." * Thus every impression received, 
even more than every action performed, tends 
to make us what we are. 

It is physiologically true that environment 
tends to determine character. The child 
brought up among vulgar associates neces- 
sarily becomes vulgar; brought up among 
impure associates necessarily becomes im- 
pure. Necessarily — unless vigorous and effi- 
cient measures are taken to counteract the 
environment ; that is, unless an efficient coun- 
teracting environment can be produced. Un- 
less, for example, the father and mother can 
erase the vicious impression by substituting 

1 Quoted and condensed from " Brain and Personality/' 
pp. 141, 142. 

13 



THE TEMPLE 

in its place a virtuous one, or can arouse the 
will of the child to abhor the vicious picture 
and so prevent the picture from exerting a 
vicious influence on the will. And even then 
in later life the picture will return at times 
to plague him. 

It is for this reason that modern reformers 
are putting great stress on a change of en- 
vironment, are demanding for the poor the 
external symbols of internal cleanliness. 
Clean streets, pure water, bright sunlight, 
are not only physically hygienic, they tend 
to moral hygiene as well. The boy brought 
up in a physically clean tenement is more 
likely to be morally clean than the boy brought 
up in a dark, dismal, and dirty tenement. It 
is for this reason we are putting fine pictures 
on the walls of our schoolrooms. They are 
not mere ornaments; they do not merely 
promote a good artistic sense in the pupils. 
They give through the eye impressions of 
"sweetness and light," and so help to make 
the pupil pure, by creating in him a habit of 
pure taste and pure imagination. They are 

14 



THE EYE 

literally helping to determine the convolutions 
of his brain. The barkeepers are not scien- 
tific psychologists; but they understand prac- 
tically this law of life. Therefore they hang 
upon their walls lewd pictures in order to 
stimulate a habit of sensual self-indulgence; 
for one form of self-indulgence tends to 
develop a craving for all other forms of self- 
indulgence. Lust creates appetite, appetite 
creates lust. 

To receive vicious impressions does not 
merely incite to vicious actions. It does 
more, much more; it creates vicious char- 
acter. It is true that seeing, to affect the 
mind, must be w r ith the mind. It is only 
when the will consents as well as the eye 
sees that the character is impressed. "The 
eye does not see," says Dr. Thomson, "any 
more than an opera-glass sees." The person 
sees; the eye, like the opera-glass, is the 
instrument which he uses. Two persons may 
read the same book, look at the same picture, 
listen to the same opera, and receive very 
different impressions. It is the impression 

15 



THE TEMPLE 



which impresses. But every vicious picture, 
vicious play, vicious book, vicious article, 
vicious jest, viciously enjoyed, goes to the 
making of a vicious character. The eye 
that looks lawlessly is as sinful and as perilous 
to character as the hand that acts lawlessly. 



16 



Ill 

THE EAR 



Ill 

THE EAR 

Take heed what you hear. 

"VTEVER did people more need this ad- 
monition than we Americans in this 
beginning of the twentieth century. For we 
have the defects of our qualities, and indis- 
criminating curiosity is the defect of an in- 
tellectually enterprising people. Our curi- 
osity is omnivorous. Like the babe who puts 
everything to his mouth to test it, we open 
our ears to everything: how can we judge if 
we do not know? All questions interest us. 
There are, however, some questions to 
which there is no answer. A little child the 
other day asked his teacher, "When was God 
born?" He was an early metaphysician. 
There has been and there still is a great deal 
of useless speculation. It is more important 
to know what the Ten Commandments mean 

19 



THE TEMPLE 

as adapted to American society to-day than 
to know the date when they were first given 
to the world, and a great deal more important 
than to know what the writer of Exodus 
meant by saying that they were written on 
tables of stone by the finger of God. It is 
much more important to know how to exer- 
cise myself so as to "have always a con- 
science void of offence toward God and 
toward men" than it is to form a reasonable 
hypothesis as to the method by which that 
conscience has been developed from a lower 
animal instinct. Too large a proportion of 
our academic instruction is imparting specu- 
lation, not knowledge, or a knowledge of 
speculations that never were of any value 
and might as well be forgotten. 

There are some knowledges that are real 
and are important to the few but are valueless 
to the majority. The doctor needs to learn 
the names and places of all the bones in the 
body; but the layman does not. If I call 
him when I am sick, he needs to study my 
symptoms and understand what is the disease. 

20 



THE EAR 

But the less I study my symptoms and think 
about my disease the speedier will be the re- 
covery. Expert knowledge is valuable to the 
expert and dangerous to the inexpert, for "a 
little knowledge is a dangerous thing/' and 
inexpert knowledge is little knowledge. Most 
of us would better leave psychic research to 
specialists who have time and talent for it. 
Half-knowledge is often the worst form of 
ignorance. 

There are also some knowledges which 
are useless and some which are worse than 
useless. Generally knowledge of gossip is 
useless, knowledge of vice is vicious. I say 
generally, for gossip is sometimes both true 
and important, and ignorance of vice is not 
a protection from vice. In America we are 
prone to make the exception the rule and the 
rule the exception; to assume that gossip is 
valuable because it is interesting and that 
knowledge of vice is valuable because it is 
knowledge. A good motto for the editors of 
our daily press would be this sentence from 
Thomas a Kempis: "It is wisdom not to 

21 



THE TEMPLE 

believe everything that men say, nor presently 
to pour into the ears of others the things that 
we have heard or believed." Many editors 
assume that we are more interested in gossip 
than in news, and in crimes and accidents 
than in achievements. Perhaps they are right. 
Perhaps our curiosity demands what our con- 
science and our taste condemn, and the 
worldly-wise editor pays more attention to 
the demand than to the condemnation. How 
the blame for the present condition of much 
of our daily press is to be divided between the 
editor and the readers I will not undertake 
to determine. But it is certain that if the 
editor does not select our reading as we wish 
he did, the selection each reader can make 
for himself. It is not a difficult matter to look 
through the daily paper and select for our 
reading what is worth reading. Take heed 
what ye read would be a good danger-signal 
to print in large type across the front page of 
every daily paper. 

But this danger-signal is also needed in our 
libraries. It is reported that a few months 

22 



THE EAR 

ago a class of young women in one of our 
colleges signed a protest against a list of fic- 
tion which had been prescribed for them to 
read. Their protest was successful and the 
list was revised. I sympathize with them. 
There are books that never ought to have 
been w r ritten; and they ought never to be 
read. Some knowledge of vice is necessary 
to a complete education; but familiarity with 
vice is not. And reading vice in fiction gives 
not knowledge, but familiarity. If we must 
acquaint ourselves or our children with the 
fact that there is vice in the world, as I think 
we must, let us do it so as to guard them 
against vice, not so as to attract them to vice ; 
let us not do it romantically. The reading of 
vicious literature cannot be defended on the 
ground that it gives information; in fact, it 
gives misinformation. Says Barrett Wendell 
in his admirable volume on "The France of 
To-Day'': "The persistent irregularities of 
conduct incessant in French literature may 
most sensibly be regarded as the intellectual 
counterpart of lives benumbing in their gen- 

23 



THE TEMPLE 

eral regularity." If so, the reader of De 
Maupassant does not get information, he gets 
misinformation, concerning French life and 
manners. 

Fiction has three functions: entertainment, 
instruction, inspiration. The story may sim- 
ply serve to pass an hour. One may read 
a book as he plays golf — for pleasure. Most 
of our magazine stories have this useful but 
not very ambitious purpose. The story may 
instruct. From Turgenieff or Tolstoy one 
may get a more vivid picture of Russian 
society than from Wallace or Leroy-Beaulieu ; 
from "Lorna Doone" a more vivid picture 
of English life in the seventeenth century than 
from Green. The so-called problem novel 
sometimes renders this service. It enables 
one half the world to know how the other 
half lives. The story may inspire. It may 
put before the mind, through the imagination, 
an ideal of life and character which arouses 
aspiration and incites to action. If it only 
arouses aspiration, it is of doubtful value, and 
may be injurious; if it also incites to action, 

24 



THE EAR 

it is useful. To put before the reader a high 
ideal that can be realized, and so inspire him 
to attempt its realization, this is the highest 
function of works of imagination. If the 
story entertains and gives false information, 
it is bad. If it entertains and gives false 
ideals — that is, ideals that cannot be realized 
— it is worse. If it entertains and at the 
same time degrades instead of inspires, if it 
makes vice attractive and virtue repulsive, if 
its ideals are not only false but vicious, it is 
a powerful instrument of vice. For we never 
rise higher than the ideals which we set before 
ourselves as the aim of our aspirations. What 
Charles Dickens has said on this subject in his 
preface to "Oliver Twist" is worth recalling: 

I had read of thieves by scores ; seductive fellows (amiable 
for the most part), faultless in dress, plump in pocket, choice 
in horseflesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry, great at 
a song, a bottle, pack of cards or dice-box, and fit companion 
for the bravest. But I had never met (except in Hogarth) 
with the miserable reality. It appeared to me that to draw 
a knot of such associates in crime as really do exist; to paint 
them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all 
the squalid poverty of their lives ; to show them as they really 
are, forever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of 
life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows closing up their 

25 



THE TEMPLE 

prospect, turn them where they might; it appeared to me 
that to do this would be to attempt a something which was 
greatly needed and which would be a service to society. 

The story which depicts vice as anything 
else than disappointing to the hopes and de- 
grading to the character lies; and acquaint- 
ance with lies is not valuable knowledge. It 
may be necessary for a few experts to know 
such books; but the less the rest of us know 
of them the better our education. To read 
what is not worth reading, in order to gratify 
either a prurient or an indiscriminating curi- 
osity, does not contribute to culture. 

Take heed what ye read. 

It is not less important to take heed how 
we read. Of that I speak in the next 
chapter. 



26 



IV 
THE EAR 



H 



IV 
THE EAR 

Take heed therefore how ye hear. 

OW to hear is as important as what we 
hear. Every public speaker recognizes 
this truth. For to the speaker there is as 
much difference in audiences as to the audi- 
ences there is in speakers. Some are not 
audiences; they are merely congregations; 
the speaker has to compel their attention. 
Others bring their attention with them. This 
is the charm of a college congregation: it is 
composed of men and women who come to 
get something, and therefore listen from the 
opening sentence. When I first went to 
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, to succeed Henry 
Ward Beecher, it was with great apprehen- 
sion. I found him an easy man to follow, 
for I spoke to a congregation trained to listen, 
and their habit of expectancy inspired the 
preacher. Who has not discovered this in 

29 



THE TEMPLE 

society, where a good listener is as good a 
member as a good talker? Who has not 
labored with a dinner companion whose eyes 
no less than his monosyllabic words said 
plainly, I am not listening ? 

A book is a speaker; reading is listening. 
Take heed how you read is as important as 
Take heed what you read. The Germans 
have a proverb that reading is an excuse for 
not thinking. Some one has characterized 
a certain type of book as a stop-thought. 
Sometimes one wants an excuse for not think- 
ing; sometimes one wants a stop-thought. 
The wearied mother, pulled in a score of 
contradictory directions by conflicting de- 
mands, gets ten minutes for repose. This is 
a time, not for thought, but for rest. But 
the overcrowded brain will not rest if it is left 
alone. She must find for it occupation enough 
to keep it from serious occupation. She wants 
a stop-thought. The business or professional 
man whose brain has toiled in the office for 
eight or ten hours needs sleep. But his brain 
has acquired a momentum and will not in- 

30 



THE EAR 

stantly stop. He wants a book that will 
make it slow down. There is use for what 
Thackeray has called a " night-cap. " Such 
reading is as useful as a game of solitaire. 

But the reading that is more than mere 
brain rest must be reading for a purpose and 
with attention. Books have been divided into 
two classes: books of information and books 
of power. Books which neither give infor- 
mation, that is the material for thought, nor 
power, that is inspiration to thought, are use- 
less except as entertainment. And reading 
which neither confers useful information nor 
new access of intellectual power is useless 
reading, except as it gives needed rest. It is 
often said that we are a reading people. That 
proves nothing. Are we a thinking people? 
It is sometimes said by a fond mother of her 
boy that he is a great reader. That is noth- 
ing. Is he a great thinker? Reading is a 
help to thought. The reading that is not a 
help to thought is time wasted. The boy who 
is reading and not thinking would much better 
be out at play with his fellows. 

31 



THE TEMPLE 

I wish that when I was young I had formed 
the habit of keeping a journal. Not for the 
purpose of recording my experiences — reli- 
gious or other. Such journal-keeping is per- 
nicious; it produces a habit of self-centred 
thought, of spiritual egotism, which makes the 
religious hypochondriac. But for the pur- 
pose of recording the thoughts which my 
reading had awakened. Such a journal-keep- 
ing serves the purpose of a recitation in 
school; it compels one to think about what 
he has read. One cannot write his thoughts 
without thinking, and it is to promote think- 
ing that one should read. Carlyle put this 
excellently well in one of his recently pub- 
lished letters to Jane Welsh: 

" There is nothing more injurious to the 
faculties than to keep poring over books con- 
tinually without attempting to exhibit any of 
our own conceptions. We amass ideas, it is 
true ; but at the same time we proportionately 
weaken our power of expressing them; a 
power equally valuable with that of conceiving 
them, and which though in some degree like it 

32 



THE EAR 

the gift of Nature, is in a far higher degree 
the fruit of art, and so languishes the more 
irretrievably by want of culture. Besides, 
our very conceptions, when not taken up with 
the view of being delineated in writing, are 
almost sure to be vague and disorganized; a 
glimpse of the truth will often satisfy mere 
curiosity equally with a full view of it; so 
hallucinations are apt to be substituted for 
perceptions; and even if our materials were 
all individually accurate, yet being gathered 
together from every quarter, and heaped into 
an undistinguished mass, they form at last an 
unmanageable chaos, serving little purpose 
except to perplex and cumber the mind that 
lives among them — to make it vacillating, 
irregular, and very unhappy — at least if it 
have not the fortune to be a pedant's mind — 
who I believe is generally a very cheerful 
character." 1 

It is the manner in which we read the daily 
papers quite as much as their contents which 

la The Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh," 
Vol. I, p. 37. 

d 33 



THE TEMPLE 

makes them of doubtful utility. We pay a 
penny for a mass of printed matter in which 
valuable information and rubbishy gossip are 
thrown together. We look at the head-lines; 
read here and there a paragraph; smile at a 
joke; shudder at a tragedy; and then throw 
the sheet down. It is doubtful whether fifteen 
minutes later we could report what we have 
read, and it is certain that we do not often 
spend fifteen minutes' thought upon it. We 
call this skimming the paper. But what we 
skim off is not the cream from a pan of nour- 
ishing milk, but the froth from a pot of none 
too pure beer. Such reading is worse than a 
waste of time; it is a waste of brain power. 
Reading inattentively what does not deserve 
attention makes the habit of attention more 
difficult. What has gone in at one ear has 
gone out at the other ; and as a rule what goes 
in at one ear and goes out at the other would 
better never have gone in. It is true that we 
are a reading people; but it is also true that 
we are an inattentive people. We read with- 
out thinking. 

34 



THE EAR 

Nor is this reading without thinking con- 
fined to the newspapers. "All people,' 5 says 
Thackeray, "who have natural healthy appe- 
tites love sweets; all children, all women, all 
Eastern people whose tastes are not cor- 
rupted by gluttony and strong drink. . . . 
Novels are sweets. All people with healthy 
literary appetites love them — almost all 
women ; a vast number of clever, hard-headed 
men." I agree with Thackeray. I have no 
sympathy with the Puritan hostility to fiction. 
But the schoolgirl who makes her luncheon off 
chocolate caramels is poorly nourished physi- 
cally. And if she makes novels her staple 
mental diet, she is poorly nourished intellect- 
ually. Moreover, there are adulterated nov- 
els as there are adulterated candies. There 
is enough classical fiction in the world well 
worth reading and rereading to make resort 
to trash unnecessary for recreation. I may 
add that the wise mother will not attempt to 
stop her children from reading fiction. She 
may limit it; if she is wise she will certainly 
guide it. The child who is familiar with the 

35 



THE TEMPLE 

"Jungle Stories" will not readily drop back 
to — But I will not advertise them. The 
best precaution against trash is a course of 
Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, 
Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling. Of course this 
does not begin to exhaust the list of novelists 
whose works are well worth reading. They 
are worth reading because they are worth 
thinking about. For he who reads a work of 
imagination profitably will endeavor to image 
to himself the scene, or the incident, or the 
character described. Fiction is worth read- 
ing only as we make it real to ourselves. Only 
that fiction is worth reading which it is worth 
while to make real to ourselves. Reading 
that is an excuse for not thinking is, except 
occasionally for the overtired brain, unprofit- 
able reading, even though it is fiction that we 
read. 

Religious reading is sometimes made an 
excuse for not thinking. In fact, unthinking 
reading of religious literature is perhaps the 
worst of all unthinking reading. The Prot- 
estant looks with self-satisfied pity upon the 

36 



THE EAR 

Roman Catholic who repeats the Pater Noster 
and keeps account of the number of the repe- 
titions by her beads. But how is it better to 
read a chapter of the Bible and impute it to 
ourselves for righteousness? It is not the 
amount of the Scripture we read w T hich profits ; 
it is the amount of thinking which w r e give to 
the reading. One man reads a chapter a day. 
Monday morning he reads the fifth chapter of 
Matthew. This religious duty done, he closes 
the book and turns to other themes w 7 hich 
interest him more. His neighbor reads one 
verse in the same chapter — "Blessed are the 
meek; for they shall inherit the earth.'' "Is 
it," he says to himself, "the meek who inherit 
the earth?" He goes out to study life and 
see what comment life makes on Christ's teach- 
ing. What he sees is the greedy and the 
grasping getting the earth. He is puzzled; 
turns the text over and over in his mind; 
compares it again and again with life. The 
promise and the perplexity to which it has 
given rise mix in his subconscious thinking. 
Gradually he perceives that while the greedy 

37 



THE TEMPLE 

and the grasping get possession of the earth, 
it is not they who get enjoyment out of it. 
Suddenly it comes to him that to inherit is 
not to earn; it is not to acquire; it is to 
receive as a free gift. He looks again at life, 
and as he looks it gradually comes to him that 
the grasping and the greedy do not enjoy 
what they possess; that they are not blessed 
in their possessing; that he who gives his 
energies and enthusiasms, not to acquisition, 
but to service, and accepts as a free gift that 
which life gives him, is the one who enjoys 
life. And he has got more out of one verse 
of Scripture which he has read and thought 
about than his neighbor got out of an entire 
chapter which he read as an excuse for not 
thinking. 

Take heed how ye read. 



38 



THE TONGUE 



V 
THE TONGUE 

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall 
not pass away. 

"fTlHE letter," says Paul, "killeth; the 
spirit maketh alive." This verse illus- 
trates Paul's saying; it enforces the truth that 
the literal interpretation of Scripture is not the 
true interpretation of Scripture. The words 
of Jesus have long since passed away. He 
spoke in Aramaic, the current dialect of his 
time. And the only words so spoken which 
are preserved in our Gospels as he spoke them 
are the cry on the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama 
sabachthani." To most readers of the New 
Testament those words would be meaningless 
if they were not translated. The Aramaic 
words of Jesus were translated by the writers 
of the Gospels into Greek ; and the Greek has 
been translated into the vernacular of the 
various peoples: Italian, Spanish, French, 

41 



THE TEMPLE 

German, Scandinavian, Russian, English. 
None of the readers of the Gospels have the 
words of Jesus; most of us have only the 
translation of a translation of those words. 
Words are like the carbon in the electric 
lamp. The carbon burns out, but the elec- 
tric current endures and makes luminous 
a new carbon. "The words that I speak 
unto you," says Jesus, "are spirit and are 
life." The spirit and the life outlive the 
words, and give light and life through other 
words to people who could not comprehend 
the original language. Words are at once 
most transient and most permanent. They 
are vehicles of life. The vehicle perishes, the 
life remains. We forget the word; we retain 
the influence which it has communicated. A 
word is but a wavelet of the air set in motion 
by the lips of one and impinging on the ear- 
drum of another. And yet a word is also 
a revelation of one soul to another soul. 
Courage and fear, hope and despair, honor 
and shame, purity and foulness, reverence 
and profanity, are carried by these "winged 

42 



THE TONGUE 

words." Nothing is so evanescent, nothing 
so enduring. 

After a minister has been preaching ten 
years, some of his admiring parishioners re- 
solve to celebrate the decade by printing a 
volume of his sermons. With much labor he 
prepares them for the press. They are printed. 
On the first copy which is put into his hands 
he looks with pleasure and his wife with pride. 
At last, she says, he has something permanent, 
not elusive, something tangible and enduring. 
A few copies are sold to special friends ; a few 
more given away; the rest remain in modest 
obscurity on the publisher's shelves, unread. 
And in a year even the proofreader has for- 
gotten their existence. But one day a for- 
lorn woman with a desolated home and a bur- 
den of care too heavy for her to bear, who 
would gladly have found relief in suicide had 
not conscience and fear combined to prevent 
her, comes in to see him; and he puts new 
courage into her heart by his strong words 
and sheds light on her life by his wise words, 
and she goes back to carry into her darkened 

43 



THE TEMPLE 

home the light he has kindled in her heart and 
to give to her children the courage he has 
given her, which they in turn will give to their 
children. Heaven and earth will pass away 
sooner than the spirit and the life which his 
words have imparted. 

As I am writing, Congressmen are talking 
about putting up in Washington some worthy 
monument to the memory of Abraham Lin- 
coln. It is well — well because so they will 
honor the present generation. For this monu- 
ment, whatever form it takes, will bear wit- 
ness that the present generation did not forget 
the service rendered to his country by a great 
man. But the Gettysburg Address and the 
Emancipation Proclamation will outlast any 
monument we can build to Abraham Lincoln's 
memory. Unnumbered thousands will get a 
new inspiration of justice and liberty from his 
words who will never look on any bronze or 
marble monument which Congress can de- 
vise. The spirit and life which his words 
have given to the world will last as long as 
men experience love of country and love of 

44 



THE TONGUE 

freedom. It is not only Jesus who can say, 
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
words shall not pass away; every teacher of 
truth, every inspirer of life, may say it. In 
words "our thoughts go from us to the 
utmost bounds of space and time; hearts 
that beat in the remotest borders of the 
world are fired by the sentiments that ours 
have conceived ; they love us though unseen, 
and 'being dead we yet speak. 5 " 

Nor is this power of words confined to 
great books, great poems, great orations 
delivered on great occasions. It is the great- 
ness of the soul, not the greatness of the occa- 
sion, which makes the words great. The two 
greatest teachers of all time were conversa- 
tionalists : Socrates and Jesus of Nazareth. 
Neither of them ever wrote a line. Great 
addresses on great occasions of theirs are not 
preserved. The only sermon of Jesus re- 
ported as such is the Sermon on the Mount, 
and many scholars think that Sermon is a 
mosaic of different teachings skilfully put 
together by the reporter — an opinion which 

45 



THE TEMPLE 

I do not entertain. Its literary unity seems 
to me to negative that hypothesis. But if 
this is an uninterrupted sermon, it is the soli- 
tary exception. The sermons on the Bread 
of Life reported in John, and the one on the 
Last Days reported in Matthew, are con- 
versational, not oratorical. Jesus Christ was 
a great teacher, not because he delivered 
great orations, but because his words were 
the vehicle for a great life. Public speech is 
a necessary substitute for private instruction; 
but the private instruction is more effective 
when it is practicable to give it. Every 
political campaigner knows that it is the 
house-to-house canvass which secures votes. 
Every evangelist knows that it is the personal 
work which wins converts. The tutorial sys- 
tem is confessedly of incalculable value in a 
college training ; the only objection is lack of 
time and money. The confessional gives un- 
told strength to the Roman Catholic Church 
because in the confessional an individual gives 
counsel to an individual. I have preached 
to many a congregation of a thousand; I 

46 



THE TONGUE 

have talked to many hundreds of perplexed 
or hindered or doubting individuals, one by 
one. I would always rather talk to the con- 
gregation of a thousand one by one if they 
would come to me, and if I had the time and 
the strength. 

Society — that kind of society in which 
men talk much and say nothing — is a great 
waste of time, the more pitiable because it is 
also a great waste of opportunity. To con- 
verse ought to mean what the dictionaries tell 
us it does primarily mean — to live with 
another. Conversation ought to be a real 
interchange of life. What is the sense of 
this modern reserve which forbids us from 
talking about the matters which really in- 
terest us? Is it because we have so little life 
to impart ? Do we keep the curtains of our 
soul down lest the world should see how empty 
the rooms are? I cannot think so. I have 
talked for an hour and a half with a group of 
thirty or forty college girls, and on other oc- 
casions with a similar group of college men 
— talked with them, not listened to them — 

47 



THE TEMPLE 

and they brought to me the profoundest 
problems in philosophy, history, ethics, and 
theology. Had I been a scientist, I am quite 
sure their interest in astronomy, geology, ex- 
perimental psychology, would have been not 
less. Yet if I had met them, or they had met 
each other, in what we miscall a social gather- 
ing, we should have talked mainly of the 
weather or possibly, with careful superficial- 
ity, of the last novel or the last magazine. 
When I get in literature a glimpse, to me a 
very enticing glimpse, of the French salon of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I 
wonder whether the woman's clubs of the 
twentieth century are any improvement — are 
not rather the reverse. In the one was the 
play of an intellectual conversation, a real 
communication of life; in the other there are 
the silent audience and a learned or eloquent 
speaker — - sometimes. 

Words ought to be a vehicle of life. Empty 
words, that contain no life, are inane, useless, 
like the shells one picks up upon the beach, 
where life once dwelt and dwells no longer. 

48 



THE TONGUE 

To make our words living words, to make 
them convey something, and so make society 
an interchange of life and a life worth inter- 
changing, to realize that society might be made 
a better place to communicate life than any 
pulpit or platform, and a better place to re- 
ceive life than any church or lecture-room — 
if we could do this w^e should transform social 
conversation from a bore to an inspiration, 
and modern society from a gathering of chat- 
tering mummies to a market-place of living 
ideas and ideals. 

I would not that every man should think 
himself a teacher and wear his cap and gown 
to all assemblies; but neither need he think 
himself a court fool and always wear his cap 
and bells. What is needed to make conver- 
sation serve its true purpose — the inter- 
change of life — is that the converser should 
be interested in something and not be ashamed 
to speak of what interests him, and should be 
interested in what interests his fellow-members 
of society and desire to listen to them. For 
"silence is one great art of conversation," 

e 49 



THE TEMPLE 

and a good listener is as essential to conver- 
sation as a good talker. "He who ques- 
tioned much/' says Lord Bacon, "shall 
learn much and content much; but especially 
if he apply his questions to the skill of the 
persons whom he asketh; for it shall give 
them occasion to please themselves in speak- 
ing." 

The Apostle John has given us the lofty, 
the noble, the divine meaning of words: 
"In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
God was always a speaking God : speaking 
through the mountain and the flower that 
bloomed upon its sides and the bird that sang 
above it; speaking in the words of the poet, 
the achievement of the statesman, the author- 
ity of the father, the comforting love of the 
mother. The picture is the word of the 
artist ; the bridge is the word of the engineer ; 
the home is the word of the mother. Words 
are the expressions of the hidden life of the 
soul. It may be the life of emotion or the life 
of intellect; the life of instruction or the life 

50 



THE TONGUE 

of mere fellow-feeling; the life of serious 
thought or the life of sparkling wit or of mere 
good humor. But if it expresses no life, it is 
an idle word, and "every idle word that men 
shall speak, they shall give account thereof 
in the day of judgment. 5 ' 



51 



VI 
THE HAND 



VI 
THE HAND 

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. 

TN visiting colleges I find hundreds of 
^ young men on the threshold of life per- 
plexed by the problem What to do. There 
appear to be already enough lawyers, doctors, 
ministers, manufacturers, merchants. Where 
shall the thousands of young men who gradu- 
ate this summer find a place? They forget 
that these thousands of college graduates 
create a demand as well as a supply. The 
doctor will want a lawyer to collect his bills, 
and the lawyer a doctor to visit him when sick; 
and both a manufacturer to make cloth and a 
merchant to sell them clothing. Every new 
man creates a new demand as well as brings 
a new supply. There is plenty of work to be 
done; enough, if society were rightly organ- 
ized, to give work to all who are willing to do 

55 



THE TEMPLE 

whatever their hands find to do, whatever it 
is and wherever it is found. 

The problem of the unemployed is really 
four problems; for there are four classes of 
unemployed. There are some who do not 
wish to work. They believe that the world 
ow^es them a living; and the world thinks it 
owes them nothing. Of these, some are rich 
and some poor; but, rich or poor, they con- 
stitute the lazy unemployed and are the 
world's paupers. There are others who do 
not wish to work, but think they do. They 
begin well, but never finish. They come to a 
difficulty, and it halts them; they find the 
load heavy, and they balk. They go from 
one unfinished job to another, and never finish 
anything. Their life is full of undertakings 
and barren of achievements. They do not 
mean to be idle, but they are hopelessly in- 
efficient. The third class are willing to work, 
but are incompetent. The incompetence may 
be physical or intellectual or moral; they 
may have flabby muscles, inert minds, or 
feeble, vacillating wills. But some infirmity 

56 



THE HAND 

forbids effectiveness. Finally are the men 
able to work and willing to work who can find 
no work to do. The remedy for the first class 
is a workhouse ; for the second class is hunger ; 
for the third class is charity; for the fourth 
class is a better industrial system. 

That there are able workers and willing 
workers who cannot find work is not to be 
doubted. They are not all muscular laborers. 
There are competent lawyers without clients, 
competent physicians without patients, com- 
petent ministers without parishes. Enforced 
idleness is one of the tragedies of life. But 
in America, in most communities and in most 
times, he who is willing to do with his might 
whatever his hand finds to do can generally 
find some opportunity for his activity. The 
secret of success in life — such success as our 
faculties fit us for — is found in the two 
clauses of this ancient counsel : First, a will- 
ingness to take hold of any work which the 
hands find to do; and, second, the employ- 
ment of all one's energies in doing it to the 
very best of one's ability. 

57 



THE TEMPLE 

My first advice to any man out of a place is 
to take the first place that offers. There are 
as many exceptions to this rule as there are 
to most rules in the Greek grammar; and at 
school I used to think there were more excep- 
tions to a rule than illustrations of it. But 
the rule is none the less a safe general one. 
No employment is ignoble which renders a 
real service to the community. If you can- 
not be a landscape architect and design a 
garden, perhaps you can be a day laborer and 
dig a ditch. If you cannot get a town or city 
parish with a comfortable salary, you can 
preach in a schoolhouse and eke out your liv- 
ing by farming. If you cannot find patients 
in the city, there is some country district that 
is in need of a good doctor. The place that 
you want may not want you, but there is some 
place that does. The work that you would 
like to do some one else may be doing; but 
there is some needed work waiting for a 
worker. The successful men in America did 
not begin by doing what they wanted to do; 
they began by doing what their hands found 

58 



THE HAND 

to do. Doubtless one may side-track him- 
self by getting a place where there is no 
chance for promotion; but he is more likely 
to be side-tracked by getting no place at all. 
It is generally easier to get from any post to 
a better post than to get from no post at all 
to any post. Men who want helpers look, to 
find what they want, among the busy men, 
not among the idlers. 

But I want to lay especial stress on the 
second clause of the text — "Do it with thy 
might." Put the whole of your energy into 
what you are doing. The ambition to do 
the best possible work is always a noble am- 
bition; the ambition to get the best possible 
pay is always an ignoble ambition. A cus- 
tomary phrase to describe one who is incom- 
petent is, "He is not all there." He who 
would do his work well must be "all there." 
He who bestows upon his job as much time 
and as much energy as he thinks he will be 
paid for will not succeed. He who bestows 
upon his job as much time and as much energy 
as can be used advantageously in doing it well 

59 



THE TEMPLE 

cannot fail. In a great factory no power is 
allowed to lie idle and no time is allowed to 
go to waste. One cause, I am persuaded, 
for the frequent home wrecks in America is 
that the woman does not think that the busi- 
ness of home-building calls for the exercise of 
all her talents; so the work which she has 
undertaken she leaves to be carried on by un- 
inspired and unwatched underlings, and goes 
herself outside to find something to do which 
she thinks worth while. She does not do 
with her might what her hands find to do 
under her own roof. 

"Genius," said Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is 
nothing but the intense direction of the mind 
to some intellectual object." I doubt the 
accuracy of the definition; but certainly no 
genius has ever accomplished much in the 
world without such concentration. If con- 
centration does not alone make the genius, 
the absence of concentration does make the 
"scatterbrain." "The art of war," said Na- 
poleon, "is the art of being stronger than the 
enemy at a given point." This is concen- 

60 



THE HAND 

tration, and this is the art of life. Charles 
Dickens emphasizes this truth in the explana- 
tion of his own success which he puts into the 
mouth of David Copperfield : "My meaning 
simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in 
life I have tried w r ith all my heart to do well ; 
that whatever I have devoted myself to I have 
devoted myself to completely; that in great 
aims and in small I have always been thor- 
oughly in earnest. I have never believed it 
possible that any natural or improved ability 
can claim immunity from the companion- 
ship of the steady, plain, hard-working quali- 
ties, and hope to gain its end. There is no 
such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. 
Some happy talent and some fortunate op- 
portunity may form the two sides of the ladder 
on w T hich some men mount, but the rounds of 
that ladder must be made of the stuff to stand 
wear and tear; and there is no substitute for 
thoroughgoing, ardent, and sincere earnest- 
ness. Never to put my hand to anything on 
which I could not throw my whole self; and 
never to affect depreciation of my work, 

61 



THE TEMPLE 

whatever it was, I find now to have been my 
golden rules. " 

Most of us have some work to do which 
we enjoy ; this it is easy for us to do with en- 
thusiasm. All of us have some work to do 
which we do not enjoy; to do this work 
with enthusiasm is not so easy. But the 
secret of success lies in our doing with our 
might whatsoever our hands find to do — the 
disagreeable not less than the agreeable. A 
favorite motto of a friend of mine I repeat 
here for the benefit of my readers : "If you 
cannot do what you like, then like what you 
do." To do our work in this spirit is to 
redeem our tasks and banish drudgery from 
our life. For drudgery is toil done without 
interest. It is possible to put interest into all 
our toil; not because the work is interesting, 
but because it is always interesting to do well 
what is worth doing. This is to conquer the 
obstacles in ourselves — and those are the ob- 
stacles most worth conquering. Every man is 
his own most dangerous enemy. Victory over 
himself is therefore the greatest of victories. 

62 



THE HAND 

In my pastoral work I have found church 
members divided into four classes : First were 
those who had no idea of Christian work, to 
whom religion was only a luxury, or at best 
a comfort, and who thought of themselves as 
completely fulfilling all church obligations if 
they attended church on pleasant Sundays 
and paid their pew rents. Second, those to 
whom the church ministered, but who did not 
minister to the church because other duties 
demanded all their time and strength. They 
were entirely right in not doing any church 
work. For church work and Christian work 
are not synonymous ; and to them the church 
was not an opportunity for service, but an in- 
spiration to service done elsewhere. Third 
were those who, driven by their consciences, 
or coaxed by their companions, were enrolled 
among the church workers, but never gave 
themselves to their work. They were ap- 
pointed on committees, but rarely attended; 
belonged to the church societies, but were non- 
attending members; taught in the Sunday- 
school, but never studied the lessons which 

63 



THE TEMPLE 



they taught. They always served with reluc- 
tance, and early resigned because they had 
"done their share." Lastly were those who 
undertook some specific piece of work and 
did it with their might. Neither guests nor 
rain kept them from their self-selected tasks. 
These are they who give the church its real 
strength. A half-hearted and reluctant worker 
in the church is only one degree better than 
none — yes ! often worse — a hindrance, not 
merely no help. Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin 
has given a new interpretation to the direc- 
tion: "Let not thy left hand know what thy 
right hand doeth." Why not? Because the 
left hand should be so busy doing its own 
work that it has no time to be watching its 
fellow. 

The law of the hand is that it should do 
with its might whatsoever it finds to do, wher- 
ever that work is found. 



64 



VII 
THE FEET 



VII 
THE FEET 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me: 
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 

f I THE eye and the ear retain impressions 
which build the character; they make 
the man through the power of habit. The 
tongue communicates life, and is the organ 
by which the man directly exerts the influence 
of his character on others. The hands are 
the instruments of his will, to carry out in 
executive action what his impulses move and 
his choice determines him to do. The feet 
are the means of transportation, the symbo 1 
of his pilgrimage and his progress. 

Life is a journey from the cradle to the 
grave. We start in infancy, travel through 
successive stages — childhood, youth, matur- 
ity, old age — and reach our journey's end at 
death. This journey is, or ought to be, a 

67 



THE TEMPLE 

continuous ascent, sometimes through diffi- 
cult steeps; this development is, or ought to 
be, a continuous growth, from seed to stalk, 
and stalk to bud, and bud to bloom, and bloom 
to fruit. The Psalmist has described it: 

Bless the Lord, O my soul, 

And forget not all his benefits : 

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; 

Who healeth all thy diseases; 

Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; 

Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies : 

Who satisfieth thine old age * with good; 

So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle. 

Paul has described it: 

For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be con- 
formed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first- 
born among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, 
them he also called : and whom he called, them he also justi- 
fied : and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 

To the Psalmist the end of the journey is 
an old age filled with good, and radiant with 
hopes brighter than those of youth. To the 
Apostle the end of the growth is a character 
conformed to the image of God's Son, a char- 

1 See C. A. Briggs's " Critical Commentary on the Psalms," 
Vol. II, p. 325. 

68 



THE FEET 

acter that makes the soul brother to Jesus 
Christ. 

This pilgrimage should be a continuous 
progress; this growth should be a continuous 
development. 

We are promised a divine fellowship in 
this pilgrimage; but this promise of divine 
fellowship is a conditional promise; it is con- 
ditioned on our going forward. The children 
of Israel came to the edge of the Red Sea; 
the water before them, a high cliff on the 
one side, the Egyptians in the rear and on 
their flank. Moses tells them, "The Lord 
shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your 
peace"; but Jehovah answers, "Wherefore 
criest thou unto me ? speak unto the chil- 
dren of Israel, that they go forward." And 
the divine deliverance comes to them as they 
press forward into the waters of the sea 
which seem to block the way. Joshua brings 
Israel to the edge of the promised land. The 
walled cities are great ; the inhabitants strong ; 
Israel is afraid : How shall we inherit this 
land of giants, before whom we are in our 

69 



THE TEMPLE 

sight and in theirs as grasshoppers? The 
answer of Jehovah is: "Only be thou strong 
and very courageous, to observe to do ac- 
cording to all the law, which Moses my ser- 
vant commanded thee: turn not from it to 
the right hand or to the left, that thou may- 
est have good success whithersoever thou 
goest." 

The Psalmist meets single-handed a troop; 
retreat impossible, their arrows would pierce 
him even while he turned; escape through 
them impossible, for just beyond is a wall of 
rock. God does not desert him, nor does 
God disperse the troop, nor by a miracle 
batter down the wall. A single prayer, "God 
give me courage," then spurs to his horse. 
Before the Arab host have time to think, he 
has dashed through their line, leaped the 
rock, and disappeared into safety. But when 
this Israelitish Putnam looks back, he de- 
scribes his deliverance thus: "By thee I have 
run through a troop; by my God I have 
leaped over a wall." Paul, beset behind and 
before, misunderstood by his Christian breth- 

70 



THE FEET 

ren, hated by his Jewish fellow-citizens, de- 
spised by the Gentiles, unable to accomplish 
his designs, does not abandon his mission; 
when he can do nothing else he can still stand 
and receive attacks from w r hich he cannot 
defend himself. And he makes his own ex- 
perience minister to the needs of his fellow- 
Christians: "Wherefore take unto you the 
whole armor of God, that ye may be able to 
withstand in the evil day, and having done 
all, to stand." John writes out of his own 
experience when he w r rites to the Church at 
Pergamos: "To him that overcometh will I 
give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give 
him a w T hite stone, and in the stone a new 
name WTitten." 

Sooner or later every pilgrim comes to the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death. Like Per- 
civale, he is in a land of deep leaves and sing- 
ing brooks and blossoming flowers and sweet 
fruits : 

But even while I drank the brook, and ate 
The goodly apples, all these things at once 
Fell into dust, and I was left alone 
And thirsty, in a land of sand and thorns. 

71 



THE TEMPLE 

Like the Psalmist, the pilgrim rests in green 
pastures and is led beside the still waters; 
and then suddenly his path conducts him 
into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. All 
that seemed to make life worth living has 
gone out of life. His ambition, his hope, his 
love, lie dead at his feet. Sickness or acci- 
dent takes him out of life and its glorious 
service, and he must lie passive, a burden to 
those whose burdens he meant to bear. A 
cruel injustice by a trusted friend and com- 
rade robs him of his earnings and leaves him 
to begin his life anew, without health of youth 
to equip him and its hopes to cheer him. The 
work he undertook proves too great for his 
abilities, and the conviction that no one but 
himself is to blame for his failure adds the 
pangs of humiliation to the pains of disaster. 
Death knocks at his door, and, entering, takes 
from him the one whose companionship was 
the inspiration of his life, and leaves him in 
utter loneliness. No such tragedy occurs, 
and yet — and perhaps this is the greatest 
tragedy of all — all the glow goes out of his 

72 



THE FEET 

sky, all the hope out of his endeavor, all the 
courage out of his heart, all the joy out of his 
companionships, and he seems to himself, he 
cannot tell why, but the shadow of a man. 

For such an hour is the promise of our 
text: If I walk through the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death, I shall find in it a divine 
companionship. There is no promise of guid- 
ance around the valley, nor of a bridge to cross 
the valley, nor of wings to fly over the valley; 
nor is there any promise of a consoling Pres- 
ence to those who sit down in the valley to 
self-indulgent grief. The promise is only to 
him who keeps on with life's journey. And 
the promise is not of a handkerchief to wipe 
away his tears, nor of sunshine to dispel the 
darkness, nor of an anaesthetic to deaden the 
pain, but of a rod and a staff to enable him to 
go on with the journey. 

There is no more strikingly dramatic illus- 
tration of this truth than that afforded by the 
passion of Jesus Christ. He foresees the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death toward which 
his path is leading him. One disciple will 

73 



THE TEMPLE 

betray him; another will deny him, the rest 
will flee from him and leave him alone. The 
Nation which he could save if it would but 
take his counsel, will seal its own doom in 
pronouncing his. The Church which he 
wished to redeem and make the true House of 
God will remain a den of thieves. Greed will 
put on the robes of religion, and cowardice 
the robes of justice, and one will falsely ac- 
cuse and the other sentence him to death. 
He prays that, if it be possible, this cup may 
pass from him. But, as he prays, the echoes 
of the approaching Temple police, marching 
across the intervening valley, convey to him 
his Father's answer to the prayer. It is not 
possible that the cup should pass if he is to 
do his appointed work. Calmly he comes to 
his sleeping disciples, arouses them with the 
words, "Rise, let us be going: behold, he is 
at hand that doth betray me," and goes forth 
to meet the arresting band. And in all the 
tragic experience of the dreadful night and 
day that follow he walks through the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death with untroubled spirit : 

74 



THE FEET 

before the eager Caiaphas, the self-inflamed 
mob, the perplexed Pilate, the frightened 
disciples, the callous soldiers, the weeping 
women of Jerusalem, the only calm, quiet, 
unperturbed spirit. 

If, then, you come to a Valley of the Shadow 
of Death, to an experience in which hope 
and ambition and- love lie dead at your feet, 
in which it seems as though life were no longer 
worth living, to a land in which you are left 
alone and thirsty in a land of sand and thorns 
— whether this experience be due to your own 
fault, or to the fault of another, or to one of 
those great disasters into which sooner or 
later every pilgrim must enter, or to no ex- 
plicable cause at all but to your own inex- 
plicable mood, remember that the promise 
of divine companionship and comfort is con- 
' ditioned upon your continuance of your jour- 
ney. When thou passeth through the rivers, 
they shall not overflow thee; when thou 
walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be 
burned. It is when I walk through the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death that I shall fear no 

75 



THE TEMPLE 

evil and that I shall have his rod and his staff 
to help me continue the journey. If the time 
comes when it seems no longer worth while 
to bear the burden, or do the duty* or enter 
into the pleasures of the past — keep stead- 
fastly on. If the pleasure no longer pleases, 
you may leave it. If the conventions of so- 
ciety require some abstinence from life as a 
token of respect to the dead, the respect may 
be paid. But lay aside no burden, discon- 
tinue no duty, abstain from no accustomed 
service of others. Comfort will be found, and 
only found, in keeping steadily, courageously, 
resolutely on with life. The way to light 
lies through the shadow; the way to life 
through death. Light and life will not come 
to you; by pressing forward you will come 
to them. When in your perplexity you are 
tempted, meet the temptation as Christian 
met it: "He began to muse what he had 
best to do. Sometimes he had half a thought 
to go back; then again he thought he might 
be halfway through the valley; he remem- 
bered also how he had already vanquished 

76 



THE FEET 

many a danger and that the danger of going 
back might be much more than to go forward ; 
so he resolved to go on. Yet the fiends 
seemed to come nearer and nearer; but 
when they were come almost at him, he cried 
out with a most vehement voice, 'I will walk 
in the strength of the Lord God ! ' so they 
gave back and came no further/ 5 



77 



VIII 
THE APPETITES 



VIII 
THE APPETITES 

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, 
do all to the glory of God. 

HOW can we eat and drink to the glory 
of God? 
Paul tells us that our body is a temple in 
which dwells a spirit which we have from God. 
This temple is in need of constant repair. We 
eat and drink to the glory of God when we so 
eat and drink as to keep it in good repair. 
Every act, physical or mental, destroys some 
tissue of the body. New tissue must be im- 
ported to take its place. This is one function 
of food and drink. The life of the body de- * 
pends upon keeping up a certain standard of 
heat within. Food is fuel. This is another 
function of food and drink. When food and 
drink are so used as to make the body the 
best possible tenement for the spirit to inhabit 

G 81 



THE TEMPLE 

and the best possible instrument for the spirit 
to use, we eat and drink to the glory of God. 
The appetites are not a sin. It is not sinful 
to enjoy a good meal. What is sinful is to 
allow our enjoyment to induce us to partake 
of a bad meal — that is, a meal that does 
not repair but impairs the body. 

Some persons violate this law by eating too 
much; others violate it by eating too little; 
still others, by eating unwisely. Fasting is 
not a duty, feasting is not a sin. Sometimes 
fasting is a sin, sometimes feasting is a duty. 
The law of the Old Testament provided for 
many feasts and for only one fast. It was 
degenerate Judaism which added other fasts. 
The Pharisee who boasted that he fasted 
twice every week was condemned, not com- 
mended, by Jesus Christ. Christ said of 
himself that he came eating and drinking. 
When his enemies called him a glutton and 
a wine-bibber, they lied; but it was not the 
kind of lie they would have told of an ascetic. 
He was accustomed to compare the king- 
dom of God to a great feast. The records 

82 



THE APPETITES 

contain no account of his declining any in- 
vitation to a social meal, and they report 
more than one acceptance. His first miracle 
was performed to prolong the festivities of a 
wedding; almost his last one was to invite 
his special friends to sit with him at a na- 
tional festal board. Thus Christianity affords 
no justification for asceticism. It is as much 
a duty to eat and drink enough to keep the 
body in good condition as it is a duty to re- 
frain from eating and drinking what will 
put it in bad condition — a truth I recom- 
mend to the especial consideration of some of 
my too dainty women readers. I know a 
young woman who at home thought she could 
eat nothing which it did not please her ex- 
acting taste to eat. She went to boarding- 
school, found that nothing pleased her exact- 
ing taste, and came to the sensible resolve to 
eat, not to please herself, but to equip her- 
self; the result was great benefit to her health 
and great comfort to her family. Let me 
change the apostolic figure. The body is 
like a mill ; if there is a flood and too great a 

83 



THE TEMPLE 

torrent sweeps through the race, the mill 
cannot do its work ; if there is a drought and 
no water runs through the race, the mill can- 
not do its work. To keep our appetites so 
adjusted as to let in water enough and not too 
much is to obey the divine law : " Whether ye 
eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to 
the glory of God." 

Total abstinence is not a synonym for tem- 
perance. Temperance is the control of the 
appetites so that they shall serve their legiti- 
mate purpose, which is to keep the body in 
good condition for the work the spirit has for 
it to do. To drink too much coffee may be 
as intemperate as to drink too much beer. 
I have been told of a Christian man who 
was informed by his doctor that he had a 
serious and insidious disease, and that his 
health demanded of him that he discontinue 
the use of meat. He went straightway home 
and ordered and ate a large steak, a food of 
which he was inordinately fond. He was as 
truly intemperate as if he had drunk a quart of 
whiskey. Intemperance is not confined to 

84 



THE APPETITES 

the saloon nor to the homes of the poor. 
Our extravagant and prolonged dinners are 
no less a form of intemperance. The modern 
habit of making the dinner-table an occasion 
for public speaking is an excellent habit. 
What is not excellent is our custom of eating 
so much before the speaking that the orators 
are unfitted to speak and the audience is ill 
fitted to listen. I have attended many public 
dinners. A happy accident gave me the only 
one I ever attended which I thought was 
truly hygienic. When I reached the club- 
house, I was met with the information that 
the steward had mistaken the date and no 
dinner was prepared. The efficient com- 
mittee scurried around, found in the larder 
of the club enough wholesome food to satisfy 
all reasonable appetite, and w r e sat down to 
i dinner of four courses — soup, beef, salad, 
and ice-cream — and had a delightful evening 
for the social speaking, and got to bed about 
the time social speaking generally begins. 
We hold up our hands in horror at the ex- 
cesses of the ancients who ate until they could 

85 



THE TEMPLE 

eat no more and then took an emetic and 
began again. But when we contrive our 
elaborate dinners so as to tempt the palate 
to invite in more food to an already over- 
burdened stomach, we repeat the offence of 
the ancients, though in a form not quite so 
vulgar. 

This vice may be and probably is confined 
to our cities and large towns, and is not pecul- 
iarly American. What is peculiarly Ameri- 
can is the manner of our eating, which Charles 
Dickens, in "Martin Chuzzlewit," satirized 
to the great indignation but also to the great 
benefit of America : 

All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that 
was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and 
everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a 
famine were expected to set in to-morrow morning, and it had 
become high time to assert the first law of nature. . . . 
Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before 
the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dys- 
peptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding not 
themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually 
at livery with them. 

This was a caricature then; it would be 
still more a caricature now. But no one 



THE APPETITES 

would think of caricaturing the excessive 
slowness of the American busy man's midday 
meal. To run from one's office to a lunch- 
counter, to shovel food into one's stomach 
as a stoker shovels coal into a furnace, and 
then run back to the office again to take up 
one's work, is a practice not so universal as 
it once was, but still by no means uncom- 
mon. And dyspepsia is in consequence a 
national disease. I once attended a wedding 
— but that was nearly half a century ago — 
in a rural section in the West, at which the 
ceremony was followed by a wedding break- 
fast at the country inn. When the rest were 
about half through, the bridegroom rose, 
wiped his mouth, and said to his bride, "Jane, 
I never sit at the table after I have finished 
my meal, and you may as well get accustomed 
to my ways now as later," and then disap- 
peared from the room. The incident would 
hardly have been possible except in America. 
A hard-working friend of mine went to his 
doctor for a remedy for dyspepsia. The 
doctor recommended a cigar after each meal, 

87 



THE TEMPLE 

and it cured him. But my friend, who told 
me the incident, added, "I do not think it 
was the cigar ; I think it was the rest for half 
an hour after meals which the cigar required. " 
No rational driver thinks of feeding his horse 
immediately on stabling him after a hard 
morning's drive; nor will he start him out 
for an afternoon's drive with the oats still 
undigested in the stomach. We ought to 
treat our bodies at least as well as we treat 
our horses. To eat in haste is sure to entail 
repenting at leisure, and it is to sin against 
the law of God. To bolt one's food as an 
ill-trained stoker shovels coal into the furnace 
— the more per minute the better — and to 
send one's nervous energy to one's brain when 
it is needed by the stomach, is to violate the 
law, " Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatso- 
ever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 

America violates this law habitually through 
ignorance, which I cannot but think is cul- 
pable. Every woman ought to understand 
the essential principles of hygienic diet, and 
so how food should be prepared. She need 

88 



THE APPETITES 

not be a cook, but should understand the 
science of cooking. Every girls' school should 
give the girls some acquaintance with the 
chemistry and the physics of the kitchen, I 
do not demand that the schools teach cookery 
as a fine art; I do demand that they teach it 
as a practical science. The woman who 
knows nothing about cooking is not, to use 
the vernacular, "on to her job." I once 
asked a great iron-master in Pennsylvania 
what was the common cause of strikes. "Bad 
cooking," he replied. I opened my eyes in 
mild astonishment. "I am quite serious," 
he continued. "The men bring indigestible 
luncheons to the furnace in their dinner- 
pails ; they get dyspepsia — and are dis- 
contented, for how can a dyspeptic be con- 
tented ? And their discontent incites to 
strikes, in the futile notion that so they can 
better their condition." Three successive 
summers I cruised about with a companion 
among the islands of Penobscot Bay. We 
slept on board and cooked our meals. We 
could catch fresh fish from the deck of our 

89 



THE TEMPLE 

boat, and could make our own coffee and 
cocoa; and we could get at any farm-house 
milk or fresh eggs. But not once in those 
three summers could we get good bread ex- 
cept in the bakeries at the larger towns. The 
bread in the farmers' houses and the fisher- 
men's cottages was invariably sour and soggy 
and indigestible. Once a fisherman rowed 
out to us to ask the gift of a loaf of bread. He 
was a great sufferer from dyspepsia. He had 
tried all sorts of cures, and had thrown away 
money on a quack advertising doctor. What 
he needed was a wholesome diet. "None 
of our women about here," he said pathet- 
ically, "know how to make good bread." 
And our experience confirmed his. It so 
happened that I spent that night on shore. 
And I came on board the next morning 
hungry, after what would have been a wholly 
uneatable and indigestible breakfast but for 
the blueberries and milk which accompanied 
it. How much better the town and city girls 
are equipped for this fundamental part of 
home-keeping than their country sisters I do 

90 



THE APPETITES 

not know. But from the alacrity with which 
they take to hotels and boarding-houses I 
suspect they are at least distrustful of their 
expertness. 

I am not demanding that we should all be 
physiological chemists and should be always 
studying the question how much of proteid 
and how T much of phosphate our body needs. 
But we should know how to make food that 
is both palatable and digestible; we should 
know what kinds of food help and what harm 
the body; and we should learn by our own 
experience our own individual needs. I once 
invited Henry Ward Beecher to dinner at a 
restaurant, and offered beef as a part of the 
dinner. He declined. "Beef makes blood," 
he said; "you need it; I don't. I have too ' 
much blood already." To know our own 
needs and to provide intelligently for them is 
to obey the laws of the appetites. To realize 
that the life is more than meat, and the body 
than raiment ; to eat to live, not to live to eat ; 
to make reason, not temporary pleasure, select 
our viands for us; to recognize, habitually, 

91 



THE TEMPLE 

the truth that the body is the instrument of 
the spirit and is to be made its useful and 
obedient instrument, and to select our food 
and drink and our time and our methods of 
eating and drinking so as to make the body 
the best possible servant of the spirit which 
dwells within it, which ministers to others 
through it, and which should control it — this 
is to eat and drink to the glory of God. 



92 



IX 
THE PASSIONS 



IX 
THE PASSIONS 

Love is strong as death; 
Jealousy is cruel as the grave ; 

^OLOMON'S SONG is a love drama. 1 
^ There are three chief characters, — Solo- 
mon, the Shulamite Maiden, the Peasant 
Lover. A chorus of women acts the part of 
a Greek chorus. The scene opens with a 
royal encampment in Galilee. The Shulamite 
Maiden has been brought to the camp to be 
added to the royal harem. The King and 
the chorus of court ladies receive her with 
batteries. But her heart turns to her Peasant 

1 It does not come within the province of this volume to 
enter into doubtful questions of Biblical criticism. There 
are two modern interpretations of this book: one the dra- 
matic, here adopted; the other the lyrical, that it is a col- 
lection of love songs, but with dramatic unity. For the 
latter see R. G. Moulton's "Modern Reader's Bible, Biblical 
Idylls"; for the former see W. E. Griffis's "The Lily among 
Thorns.'' See also my "Life and Literature of the Ancient 
Hebrews," chapter lx, and note there. 

95 



THE TEMPLE 

Lover, and to the royal flatteries she turns a 
deaf ear. The company go up to Jerusalem, 
taking the captive maiden with them. The 
King hopes that absence from her lover in 
new scenes, and the glories of the city and 
the palace, will win her away from her rural 
home. But she will have none of them. 
Waking, she sings of her brothers, her vine- 
yard, her lover. Sleeping, she dreams of 
him. Neither the flatteries of the King nor 
his ardent passion has any effect upon her. 
And the simple story ends with her return to 
Galilee, where she appears leaning upon the 
arm of her Peasant Lover, and greeted by 
the song of the village maidens as the lovers 
come back to the rural home beneath the 
apple tree, where she was given birth by her 
mother, and given a second birth by her 
lover. And the simple drama, whose motif 
is the spontaneity of love, "Stir not up nor 
awaken love until it please," ends with the 
verse : 

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm : 
For love is strong as death; 

96 



THE PASSIONS 

Jealousy is cruel as the grave : 

The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, 

A very flame of the Lord. 

Many waters cannot quench love, 

Neither can the floods drown it : 

If a man would give all the substance of 

his house for love, 
He would utterly be contemned. 



Solomon's Song is to most readers of the 
Bible a closed book. The age needs to reopen 
and reread it. For it is a simple and graphic 
portrayal of the conflict between love and am- 
bition in a woman's life, with love triumphant. 
And in this age, when ambition in all its forms 
is calling so loudly to woman to come out from 
her home — social ambition offering her wealth 
or European titles, business ambition offering 
her the zest of competition with men in the 
struggle of life, political ambition demanding 
that she take up the duties and burdens and 
proffering her the shadowy rewards of gov- 
ernment — a literature that reminds her that 
love is the best life has to offer, and that if a 
man would give all the substance of his house 
in lieu of love, he should be utterly contemned 

h 97 



THE TEMPLE 

by the true woman, is not too archaic to be 
read and pondered with profit. 

There is a theory of life known as ihe doc- 
trine of "total depravity/ 5 This is not in- 
tended to mean that every man is as bad as 
he can be, which would imply that there are 
no grades in wickedness; it is intended to 
mean that all the faculties and powers of man 
are naturally evil and become good only as 
by a divine influence the man is re-created. 
So defined, I absolutely and totally dissent 
from the doctrine. On the contrary, I believe 
that every faculty and power of man is natu- 
rally good ; evil only as it is evilly directed. 
Depravity is not natural; it is unnatural, 
contra-natural. Acquisitiveness is the spur to 
useful industry ; approbativeness is the mother 
of sympathy; self-esteem is necessary to self- 
protection ; without combativeness there would 
be no heroism, without destructiveness no 
great reforms. On the other hand, the nobler 
faculties misdirected incite to evil : reverence 
to superstition, faith to credulity, hope to illu- 
sion, ill-governed love to sentimentality. 

98 



THE PASSIONS 

Of all the forces which combine to make up 
man's complex nature, perhaps the passions 
are the strongest — the most cruel, and the 
most beneficent. They are coals of fire which 
hath a most vehement flame, and, like fire, 
are a good servant and a bad master. They 
may cheer the home with a welcoming radi- 
ance, or they may consume it and leave it 
a heap of ashes. Unsanctified by spiritual 
love, the passions have been used to minister 
to a horrible greed; they have reduced women 
to an unspeakably cruel slavery; they have 
committed most foul and unnatural mur- 
ders; they have wrecked homes, embittered 
lives, sundered fair friendships, incited to 
bestial treachery, betrayed kings to their own 
undoing and the undoing of their country, 
and have degraded body and soul and sent 
both together to the lowest hell even while 
yet on earth. Guided by a sound intelli- 
gence, controlled by a strong will, and spiritu- 
alized by pure unselfishness, the passions form 
the sweetest, the strongest, and the most 
sacred love on earth, save only the love which 

99 



THE TEMPLE 

unites mother and child, and of that love 
they are the creator. So sanctified and di- 
rected, they make the holy family possible, 
which in turn makes the State and the Church; 
they make the souls of the lovers immune 
from the perils of prosperity and make sweet 
the cup of adversity; they give courage in 
danger, patience in disaster, moderation in 
victory, and a joy in life which no pen of poet 
or eloquence of orator has ever been able 
adequately to portray. This passionate love 
is unique — unlike the love of parent for 
child, or friend for friend. It has no analogue 
in any other motive power, any other emotion. 
Inspired by this love, the careless youth be- 
comes a caretaker for her whom he loves, 
and blazes his way through the unknown 
forest, made by her companionship heroic in 
meeting danger, persistent in overcoming 
obstacle, patient in routine, and by love re- 
deeming toil from drudgery. Do I idealize? 
No ! I could not if I would. For there is 
no danger which, in the actual history of the 
world, this love has not bravely met, no bur- 

100 



THE PASSIONS 

den which it has not gladly borne, no tragedy 
which it has not calmly confronted. The 
passion of love is the master passion of the 
human race, and, at its best, is the purest and 
divinest of human passions. 

"This," says Paul, "is a great mystery." 
Mystery it is, and mystery we must leave it. 
But it ought not to come to our children a 
wholly uninterpreted mystery. Every mother 
ought, however reluctant her tongue, to inter- 
pret the mystery to her daughter, every father 
to his son. For, if guided aright, this passion 
of love leads up to a heaven on earth; un- 
guided and uncontrolled it leads to a hell. 
Creator of life, it is also a prolific producer 
of disease. Supreme among the virtues, it 
sometimes becomes the most degrading of 
vices. The Church, the Press, the School, 
can teach little on this subject. This duty 
belongs to the home and the parent, and can- 
not be safely shifted off upon substitutes. To 
teach our children what is the mystery of love 
and life, to train our boys in that chivalric 
reverence for woman which should be her 

101 



THE TEMPLE 

wholly adequate protection, to train our girls 
in that womanly self-respect which should be 
their self-protection when chivalry fails and 
genteel boorishness takes its place; not to 
essay the generally impossible and always 
perilous task of keeping boys and girls apart, 
but in lieu thereof to habituate them to grow 
up together in a natural and mutually respect- 
ing fellowship which may gradually ripen into 
love without the danger that comes from a 
sudden onrush of uncontrolled passion too 
strong to be resisted — this is perhaps the 
most important, as it certainly is the most 
delicate and difficult, task of the parent. To 
neglect it, however difficult, is a criminal 
breach of trust; to perform it, a sacred duty. 



102 



X 

THE IMAGINATION 



THE IMAGINATION 

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that 
exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing 
into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. 

T 1 1HERE is a disease known as locomotor 
A ataxia. The limbs refuse to obey the 
will, and the arms and legs move, so* to 
speak, according to their own uncontrolled 
fancy. There is a locomotor ataxia of the 
mind. He who is afflicted with this disease 
— sometimes called wandering thoughts — 
cannot control his thinking. His mental pro- 
cesses act, or seem to act, independently of 
his will. The lack of mental self-control, 
when carried to an extreme, becomes a form 
of insanity. The possession of mental self- 
control in its highest degree amounts to genius. 
A friend of mine recently told me this story 

105 



THE TEMPLE 

of his experience with Theodore Roosevelt. 
He called at the White House to read to the 
President, at his request, a paper for the 
President's consideration. Mr. Roosevelt was 
reading a scientific book, told my friend to go 
ahead with his reading, and at the same time 
continued to read his book. My friend natu- 
rally concluded that his document was get- 
ting no attention, until, from questions inter- 
spersed from time to time, and remarks upon 
the document when the reading was over, he 
was forced to the conclusion that it was not 
the document but the book which had been 
practically ignored. But later, at luncheon, 
the President talked with a scientific guest of 
the scientific treatise in a way which showed 
conclusively that he had read it understand- 
ingly. My friend remarked humorously that 
Mr. Roosevelt did not give ordinary mortals 
a square deal; that psychologists tell us we 
use only one lobe of our brain, and it was 
evident that Mr. Roosevelt used both — one 
for the document, the other for the book. 
The story is here told because it furnishes an 

106 



THE IMAGINATION 

unusual illustration of the power of the will 
over the mental processes. 

The first end of education is, or ought to 
be, to train the mind to habits of lawful think- 
ing — that is, to thinking in obedience to 
laws recognized by the mind and enforced by 
the will. Lack of intellectual power is very 
often lack of will power. To attend is "to 
direct the mind." The first art the student 
has to acquire is the art of bringing the mind 
under the direction of the will, and so making 
it do the work which the student assigns to it. 

This psychological law Paul recognizes 
in the phrase "Casting down imaginations 
and every high thing that exalteth itself 
against the knowledge of God, and bringing 
into activity every thought to the obedience 
of Christ." 

To many persons the imagination appears 
to be, by its very nature, a lawless faculty; 
like a bird intended to flit hither and thither 
as it fancies, not to be directed or controlled 
in its flight. To many, an obedient imagi- 
nation would seem like a contradiction in 

107 



i 

\ 



THE TEMPLE 

terms. Not so does it seem to the student of 
literature. He recognizes that there are intel- 
lectual laws of the imagination, and that he 
only is a true poet who either understands 
those laws and obeys them consciously, or 
intuitively feels their obligation and obeys 
them unconsciously. A lawless imagination 
never produced great literature. 

But these laws are moral as well as intel- 
lectual. He who indulges in imaginary re- 
venge is revengeful; he who indulges in im- 
aginary lust is lustful: "As a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he." This is the inherent 
and ineradicable sin of vicious literature. 
The boy who feeds his imagination on tales 
of romantic burglars and freebooters is edu- 
cating his imagination to a lawless life as 
surely as the boy who in a thieves' school is 
trained to pick the pocket of a comrade with- 
out being detected is educating his fingers 
in the skill of thievery. The youth who reads 
salacious books or goes to salacious plays is 
storing his imagination with pictures which 
will be later exhibited to him when he least 

108 



THE IMAGINATION 

wishes to look upon them. He is making 
his artistic nature a lawless nature. The 
imagination is like the tendrils of a vine: 
trained on a trellis, it lifts the vine up into the 
air and the sunlight; allowed to grovel on 
the ground, it fastens the vine to the earth, 
where worms crawl, bugs devour, and feet 
trample upon it. 

Imagination and faith exercise the same 
function: imagination can hardly be said to 
give substance to things hoped for, but it is 
the evidence of things unseen. The power 
to see the unseen may be used in either one 
of three ways : it may conjure up sensual and 
brutal images ; it may conjure up mere pleas- 
ing pictures ; it may conjure up ideals superior 
to the life by which we are surrounded. In 
the first use it degrades; in the second it 
pleases; in the third it elevates. The first 
use promotes vice; the second may produce 
innocent pleasure; the third brings inspira- 
tion. Christ apparently used the imagination 
only for the purpose of instruction and in- 
spiration. We are not therefore to conclude 

109 



THE TEMPLE 

that his followers may not use it for the pur- 
poses of recreation, for these two uses are not 
inconsistent. But they may not use it to 
make or to look at attractive pictures of vice, 
for such use despoils it of its power to in- 
struct and inspire. 

We do not, perhaps, sufficiently recognize 
the fact that Jesus was a master in the crea- 
tion of imaginative literature. His teaching 
was largely in illustration. And in his illus- 
trations he took the common experiences of 
life to direct the mind to higher and unusual 
experiences. The material picture was made 
to direct the attention to the spiritual reality. 
Thus the sower sowing his seed was made to 
teach a lesson concerning the processes of 
education and the difficulties encountered 
by the teacher. A social feast was made to 
direct the thoughts toward the Kingdom of 
God. A care-free bird was made to teach 
the anxious how to be rid of needless anxieties. 
A father's love for a wayward son was made 
to interpret the love of the heavenly Father 
for his children. Thus, to those who accept 

no 



THE IMAGINATION 

Jesus as an example of what life should be at 
its highest, the literature which the Great 
Teacher has left serves as a model of what 
is the highest use of the imagination : to body 
forth in understandable object-lessons the 
supernatural truths of the invisible and spirit- 
ual world. To sum up the message of this 
chapter in two sentences : 

We must make our thinking obedient to 
the laws of thought, and our imaginations 
obedient to the laws of the imagination. 

The highest use to which we can put the 
imagination is to make material things the 
symbol of spiritual experiences. 



in 



THE CONSCIENCE 



XI 
THE CONSCIENCE 

The lamp of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be 
single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye 
be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If there- 
fore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that 
darkness ! 

IjWERY man has some capacity to dis- 
"^ tinguish between the beautiful and the 
ugly — we call it taste ; a capacity to dis- 
tinguish between the expedient and the inex- 
pedient — we call it judgment; a capacity 
to distinguish between right and wrong — 
we call it conscience. Neither of these facul- 
ties is infallible. He may admire what is 
not admirable, colors that shout and colors 
that swear at one another; his taste is bad. 
He may distinguish poorly between the ex- 
pedient and the inexpedient, may judge that 
to be true which is only agreeable, and a course 
of conduct to be wise merely because he de- 
sires to pursue it; his judgment is bad. He 

115 



THE TEMPLE 

may think that to be right which is wrong, 
and that to be wrong which is right; he may 
call evil good and good evil, put darkness 
for light and light for darkness, put bitter for 
sweet and sweet for bitter; his conscience 
plays him false. Similarly, he may be club- 
footed or short-sighted, but still he has feet 
and eyes. 

Every normal person possesses three ca- 
pacities — taste, judgment, conscience — as 
every normal person has feet and eyes. But 
the one faculty is no more the voice of God 
than the other. The conscience is one of 
the lights to lighten the pilgrim on his way. 
It is the most important of the three, because 
moral distinctions are more important than 
distinctions in taste or distinctions in policy. 
But as one may be color-blind, so one may 
be morally blind. If so, if the light that 
is in thee be darkness, how great is 
that darkness ! Charles Cuthbert Hall has 
graphically portrayed in few words the con- 
trast between a diseased and a healthy 
conscience : 

116 



THE CONSCIENCE 

The diseases of conscience are more terrible than leprosy. 
It may become deaf to the Divine witness ; blind to the dis- 
tinctions of right and wrong; corrupt and abominable in its 
perverted relation to desire; deceitful and cruel in its sanc- 
tionings of conduct; paralyzed through deliberate misuse; 
seared as with a hot iron. Health of conscience is more 
beautiful than bodily perfection. It is the virility of the 
soul : alert, well-balanced, clear-eyed, rejoicing not in iniquity, 
but rejoicing in the truth; sane in judgment, ruling desire 
with the hand of right reason ; courageous in goodness; 
happy in the felicity of correspondence with the eternal 
right. 1 

No man, therefore, may say, Whatsoever 
seems to me right is right to me, any more than 
he can say, Whatsoever seems to me true is 
true to me, or, Whatsoever seems to me beau- 
tiful is beautiful to me. A crude chromo is 
not made equal to a Rembrandt or a Titian, 
because the uneducated taste cannot see the 
difference. Folly is not made wise, because 
the fool cannot distinguish between them. 
Neither is right made wrong or wrong right, 
because the light that is in the obtuse soul 
is darkness. It is not enough to follow 
one's conscience; it is also necessary to 
educate it. 

1 C. C Hall, "Christ and the Eastern Soul," p. 87. 
117 



THE TEMPLE 

There are four rules to be observed, or 
four methods to be pursued, to keep the light 
that is within us from becoming darkness, 
to make and keep it luminous and illumi- 
nating. 

I. As there are standards of art by which 
we may educate our taste, so there are stand- 
ards of right and wrong by which we may 
educate our conscience. That standard may 
be found in wise words of wise men; but 
better is it to be found in the great lives of 
truly great men. 

'Worship of a Hero," says Carlyle, "is 
transcendent admiration of a Great Man. 
I say great men are still admirable; I say 
there is at bottom nothing else admirable! 
No nobler policy than this of admiration for 
one higher than himself dwells in the breast 
of man." Every healthy boy finds in history 
some hero to idealize, admire, or imitate: 
a Lincoln, a Grant, a Lee, a Jefferson, a 
Washington; or, looking abroad, a Glad- 
stone, a Cromwell, a William of Orange. 
Blessed is the child who finds the hero in 

118 



THE CONSCIENCE 

his own father or mother. He first idealizes, 
then reveres, then imitates his hero, measures 
himself by the object of his hero-worship, 
brings his conscience up to the standard of 
a life higher than his own. Cynicism dark- 
ens the conscience; the cynic begins by dis- 
believing in the goodness of men, and ends 
by disbelieving in goodness altogether. The 
spirit of universal suspicion tends to personal 
degeneration. He who allows himself to be- 
lieve that all men are liars easily comes to be- 
lieve that sincerity is a fiction of the preachers 
and the poets. He adjusts his conscience to 
his lowered ideals of humanity. 

Most human heroes lose something of the 
heroic as we learn more fully their character 
and their lives. Some heroic elements may 
appear grander; but other elements not so 
grand are revealed. The reader of Gideon 
Welles's Diary discovers that professional 
politicians in Abraham Lincoln's time were 
not greatly different from professional poli- 
ticians in our own time : they were some good, 
some bad, some mixed. The reader of John 

119 



THE TEMPLE 

Fiske's " American Revolution" discovers 
that the fathers were not all that our Fourth 
of July orators had painted them. But there 
is one hero in human history who, the more 
his life and character are studied, the more 
heroic he appears. For the life of Jesus of 
Nazareth furnishes a standard which the 
world understands to-day and reveres to-day 
as it never did before. "Hero-worship/' 
again says Carlyle, "heartfelt, prostrate ad- 
miration, submissive, burning, boundless, for 
the noblest godlike Form of Man — is not 
that the germ of Christianity itself? The 
greatest of all Heroes is One — whom we 
do not name here." To make this hero our 
standard, to measure our ideal by his prac- 
tice, to bring our conscience up to his life, 
is the first step in securing that the light within 
us be not darkness, that the whole soul be 
made full of light. One need not wait to 
solve either one's theological or one's his- 
toric doubts before accepting this standard. 
"Religion," says John Stuart Mill, "cannot 
be said to have made a bad choice in pitch- 

120 



THE CONSCIENCE 

ing on this man as the ideal representative 
and guide of humanity; nor, even now, 
would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to 
find a better translation of the rule of virtue 
from the abstract to the concrete than to 
endeavor so to live as Christ would approve 
our life." 

II. He who would make and keep his 
conscience a light to guide his conduct and 
a force to form his character must apply it to 
his own life, not to the life of his neighbor. 
He must act on the aphorism, "Conscience 
for yourself, not for another/' He who 
habitually employs his conscience as a meas- 
uring rod upon others in time loses the power 
to employ it as a measuring rod upon him- 
self. Instead of taking a nobler life than his 
own by which to test his own conduct, he uses 
his own life by which to test the lives of 
others. The twin evil spirits uncharitable- 
ness and self-conceit take possession of him, 
and equally unfit him to judge others or him- 
self. When Christ says, "Judge not, that ye 
be not judged," he means exactly what he , 

121 



THE TEMPLE 

says. We may judge whether a man is 
adapted to a particular place or work — as a 
merchant whether the applicant will be a good 
bookkeeper, or the college whether the can- 
didate is fitted to enter the freshman class. 
But even the judge on the bench is not to 
make his conscience the standard for the 
criminal before him. He judges, not the 
amount of absolute demerit in the man in the 
dock; he only judges two things — what is 
necessary to protect society from the crimi- 
nal's depredations, and what discipline is 
necessary to make an honest man out of 
him. "If," says Thomas a Kempis, "thou 
canst not make thyself such as thou wouldest 
be, how canst thou have another to thy 
liking ?" He who would keep his conscience 
clear-eyed and a keen discriminator should 
refuse to allow it to pass judgments on others, 
should keep it solely to its allotted task, that 
of judging its owner. He will thus change the 
general question, Is it right to dance, to smoke, 
to go to the theatre, to drive on Sunday? to 
the specific question, Is it right for me to dance, 

122 



THE CONSCIENCE 

to smoke, to go to the theatre, to drive on Sun- 
day? "Who art thou that judgest another 
man's servant ? to his own master he standeth 
or falleth." 

III. Conscience should be a prophet rather 
than a historian. It should stand in the bow 
of the vessel to pilot it, not in the stern to cast 
the log. There are a great many persons to 
whom conscience is only a police officer: it 
hales them before the court after the deed is 
done, and submits them to inquisition to 
determine whether the doing was right or 
wrong. The time to interrogate conscience is 
in the morning before the day begins. It is 
well to forecast the day; to consider before- 
hand the questions that are likely to arise, to 
demand of conscience its judgments on those 
questions, and so to be prepared to meet them 
with some measure of provision. This is bet- 
ter than to wait till the day is over and then 
pass its events in review and call on conscience 
to pass judgments on what can no longer be 
changed. That also may be sometimes wise, 
but chiefly as a preparation for similar events 

123 



THE TEMPLE 

that are likely to recur in ensuing days. 
Conscience is intended to be our guide rather 
than our judge; and a judge only that it may 
be a better guide. We cannot alter yesterday. 
All we can do is to learn its lessons that we 
may not repeat the same blunder, run into the 
same temptation, or commit the same sin 
to-morrow. More dwelling on the past than 
is necessary for better and wiser living in the 
future only tends to either morbid discour- 
agement or morbid self-conceit. Not without 
significance does Christ compare the con- 
science to the eyes, which are put in the front 
of the head that we may see whither we are 
going, not in the back of the head that we 
may see where we have gone. 

IV. Most important of all the conditions 
for keeping conscience sensitive and luminous 
is prompt obedience to its directions. The 
most common method of making the light 
that is in us darkness is a refusal to follow the 
light we have. The process is this : We adopt 
a course of conduct. Conscience protests. 
We disregard the protest. Thus we are at 

124 



THE CONSCIENCE 

odds with ourselves. But to be at odds 
with ourselves becomes intolerable. We have 
refused to reconcile our conduct with our 
conscience. Presently we begin to reconcile 
our conscience with our conduct. First we 
say, Everybody does it. Then, We must do 
it. Then, It cannot be very wrong to do what 
everybody does and what we must do. Con- 
science is corrupted. It was accuser; it 
becomes first apologist, then defender. The 
process of corruption is complete. The light 
that was in us has become darkness. 

Education of conscience by a nobler 
standard. 

Employment of conscience in self -judg- 
ment, not in judgment of others. 

Prevision of conscience as a preparation for 
the future, rather than revision by conscience 
in judgment of the past. 

Prompt and loyal obedience to conscience. 

These are the four methods — perhaps, 
rather, I should say four of the methods — 
for keeping conscience a receiver and a giver 
of light to the life. 

125 



XII 
THE INTUITION 



XII 
THE INTUITION 

Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings ; prove 
all things; hold fast that which is good. 

T I THESE are not four independent apho- 
risms. Combined, they embody Paul's 
religious philosophy. Man possesses a spir- 
itual nature by which he immediately discerns 
the invisible world; let him not quench this 
spiritual nature. Does he lack it ? let him not 
despise one that possesses it in larger meas- 
ure, the man of spiritual genius. Yet let him 
not accept all visions, his or theirs, with un- 
questioning faith; let him test them all. How? 
By asking the question, Are they profitable ? 
The first two counsels find a counterpart 
in modern philosophy in a remarkable pas- 
sage by Professor Huxley in his monograph 
on Hume: 

In whichever way we look at the matter, morality is based 
on feeling, not on reason; though reason alone is competent 
to trace out the effects of our actions and thereby dictate con- 
duct. Justice is founded on the love of one's neighbor; and 
k 129 



THE TEMPLE 

goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law, like the laws 
of physical nature, rests in the long run upon instinctive in- 
tuitions, and is neither more nor less "innate" and "neces- 
sary" than they are. Some people cannot by any means be 
got to understand the first book of Euclid; but the truths of 
mathematics are no less necessary and binding on the great 
mass of mankind. Some there are who cannot feel the dif- 
ference between the "Sonata Appassionata " and "Cherry 
Ripe"; or between a gravestone-cutter's cherub and the 
Apollo Belvedere; but the canons of art are none the less 
acknowledged. While some there may be who, devoid of 
sympathy, are incapable of a sense of duty; but neither does 
their existence affect the foundations of morality. Such 
pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the 
halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of consciousness ; and 
the anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist 
of the body would ignore abnormal specimens. And as there 
are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaelles, in whom the 
innate faculty for science or art seems to need but a touch to 
spring into full vigor, and through whom the human race 
obtains new possibilities of knowledge and new conceptions 
of beauty ; so there have been men of moral genius, to whom 
we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, which 
ordinary mankind could never have attained: though, 
happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a vision which 
lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count 
life well spent in shaping some faint image of it in the actual 
world. 1 

1 T. II. Huxley, "Collected Essays," Vol. VI, pp. 239, 240. 

130 



THE INTUITION 

What Huxley here declares to be true of 
morality is equally true of religion. Both 
are an experience. The truths of religion 
and the truths of morality are not demon- 
strated; they are perceived. Immortality is 
not an hypothesis concerning the future, 
more or less probable; it is a present expe- 
rience of a continuing life that does not share 
the decay and mortality which the body ex- 
periences. Forgiveness of sin is not a theory, 
so that one may discuss its possibility. The 
soul forgiven feels the burden of the past 
lifted off, the sting of remorse extracted, and 
a new inspiration to a better life in the future. 
When the Psalmist says, "Blessed is he whose 
transgression is forgiven, whose sin is cov- 
ered/' he is describing his own experience, 
which one can no more take away from him 
by argument than he can take from the mu- 
sician the enjoyment derived from hearing a 
noble orchestra play a great symphony. The 
inspiration of the Bible is a theological theory, 
and theories differ as to its nature. But the 
fact that the Bible has inspired men with 

131 



THE TEMPLE 

courage and hope and loyalty to truth and 
virtue as no other collection of literature has 
ever done is not a theory; it is an experience 
which philosophy has not given and phi- 
losophy cannot destroy. Faith in Christ is 
neither a historic opinion that such a person 
lived and taught, nor a theological opinion 
that he stood in a unique relation to the Infinite 
and Eternal One. It is an appreciation of 
the beauty of Christ's character, the perfec- 
tion of his life, and the truth and goodness of 
his teaching. Its antithesis is not a doubt 
whether all that is written of him in the Gos- 
pels is true, nor whether he is uniquely divine ; 
it is the experience "When we see him, there 
is no beauty that we should desire him." 
God is not a scientific hypothesis; he is the 
Great Companion, the One in whom we live 
and move and have our being. He is an 
experience in the heart of his child as the 
mother is an experience in the heart of her 
child. "Religion," says Max Miiller, "con- 
sists in the perception of the Infinite under 
such manifestations as are able to influence 

132 



THE INTUITION 

the moral character of man." ! A perception 
is something very different from a conclu- 
sion. , The soul immediately and directly i 
perceives the Infinite. "Spirit with spirit 
can meet." And, meeting with his Father 
and filled with the consciousness of the 
Everlasting Presence, the soul cries out, 
" Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and 
there is none upon the earth that I desire 
beside thee." 

The present age is called a sceptical age. 
In so far as it is sceptical the reason may be 
easily seen. We have allowed this spirit in 
us which immediately and directly perceives 
the invisible and the eternal to be quenched. 
We have been for the last century looking, 
not at the things which are unseen and eternal, 
but at the things which are seen and temporal. 
We have focussed our attention on the material 
world and dimmed our vision of the imma- 
terial and spiritual world. What, in a fa- 
mous and pathetic passage, Charles Darwin 
has said of himself, the nineteenth century 

1 Max Muller, "Natural Religion/' p. 188. 
133 



THE TEMPLE 

might say : "Up to the age of thirty or beyond 
it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works 
of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, 
and, even as a schoolboy, I took intense de- 
light. But now, for many years, I cannot 
endure to read a line of poetry : I have tried 
lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so 
intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have 
also almost lost my taste for pictures or 
music." * 

The remedy is not new arguments for im- 
mortality, new theories of the atonement, a 
new philosophy of inspiration, a new defini- 
tion of divinity, a new conception of divine 
personality. These are all well in their way; 
they may be valuable, possibly indispensable. 
But they do not constitute a radical remedy 
for modern scepticism. The scientific method 
will never give demonstration of unscientific 
truth. Arguments will never take the place 
of a living experience. As well expect an ex- 
position of the undulatory theory of light to 

1 "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin/' Vol. I, p. 81. 
134 



THE INTUITION 

give sight to the blind. The radical remedy 
is a new point of view, a new habit of thought, 
a new exercise of the unused spiritual faculty. 
I once stood on the prow of an Atlantic 
steamer by the side of the lookout. When 
he saw a sail in the distance, he sounded a 
little whistle as a notification to the wheels- 
man. It was sometimes ten or fifteen min- 
utes before I could see what he had seen. 
I needed, not a philosophy of vision, but a 
better pair of eyes. He who cannot see God 
lacks, not sound philosophy, but spiritual 
vision. We have lost our far-sightedness 
because our eyes have been fixed on the 
near-by things. Not unintelligently : the mi- 
croscope, the telescope, the laboratory, have 
all been employed in honest investigation. 
Not fruitlessly: we need to know the world 
we live in, and we know it a great deal better 
than our fathers knew it. Not always self- 
ishly: we have unselfishly sought to improve 
the condition of our fellows. But too exclu- 
sively. And so we have developed one side of 
our nature at the expense of the other side. 

135 



THE TEMPLE 

There are philosophers who deny that there 
is any other side of our nature; who affirm 
that we can only know what we can touch, 
taste, see, hear; all else is hypothesis; that 
scientific knowledge is the only knowledge. 
There are philosophers who affirm that most 
men can get no further into the invisible world 
than to see the justice that is founded on 
love of one's neighbor and the goodness that 
is a kind of beauty ; that religion, like art and 
music, is only for the elect few. But most 
of us have no such philosophy. We recall 
devout souls; we realize that they have an 
experience which we have not; we envy 
them their possession; we want some article 
or sermon or book to give it to us. But no 
article, sermon, or book can give it to us. 
Nothing can give it to us but the development 
of an undeveloped faculty. We can acquire 
the power to see only by looking. 

So far as this is a sceptical age it is so 
because it is too exclusively a scientific age. 
I do not know what the booksellers would say, 
but I do not believe that there is a great de- 

136 



THE INTUITION 

mand for devotional literature. The Bible 
is studied more thoroughly than before, but 
it is critically, that is, scientifically, studied. 
That it is more used as a simple expression 
of devotional life, I doubt. Biblical scholars 
have been more busy in endeavoring to as- 
certain who wrote the Twenty-third Psalm 
than in endeavoring to ascertain how a twen- 
tieth-century Christian can have this blessed 
experience of divine companionship; they 
have been more desirous to discover who 
wrote the Fourth Gospel than to learn how we 
can make the prayer in the seventeenth chap- 
ter of John the supreme desire of our lives. 

Not only devotional literature — all litera- 
ture takes a second place. Our great poets 
are of the past, and I wonder how much 
their poems are read by the present genera- 
tion. Our favorite novels are problem novels ; 
our favorite plays society plays. To present 
in fiction as nearly as possible a reproduction 
of what we see in daily life is the ambition of 
realism; to present a caricature of it is the 
ambition of American humor. It is true that 

137 



THE TEMPLE 

the study of literature has been in recent years 
taken up in our schools and colleges; but, 
with rare exceptions, it is the scientific, not 
the literary, study which is pursued. Greek, 
which is pre-eminently the language of the 
greatest literature of the past, is not only dead, 
but well-nigh forgotten. And we wonder 
that the age is sceptical, and endeavor to 
supply the defect of an undeveloped faculty 
by a scientific method; to substitute a reli- 
gious hypothesis for a religious experi- 
ence. 

The first step in the remedy for the scep- 
ticism of the twentieth century is indicated 
alike by Paul and by Professor Huxley: by 
Paul in the three words, "Despise not proph- 
esyings"; by Huxley in the more ample 
statement, "There have been men of moral 
genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and 
visions of moral perfection, which ordinary 
mankind could never have attained; though, 
happily for them, they can feel the beauty of 
a vision which lay beyond the reach of their 
dull imaginations, and count life well spent 

138 



THE INTUITION 

in shaping some faint image of it in the 
actual world." 

There are men of outsight — careful, 
skilled, trained observers — under whose 
guidance and direction we put ourselves if we 
desire to investigate the external world. There 
are men of insight, with quick, sensitive spir- 
itual vision, under whose guidance and direc- 
tion we may well put ourselves if we desire 
to become acquainted with the invisible world. 
These men also tell us what they have seen; 
and their testimony is worthy of our consid- 
eration. These are the poets and prophets, 
the men of moral genius. Their ideals of 
life are not their creation; they are their 
visions of the eternal and invisible realities. 
Tennyson and Browning have something to 
give us as well as Darwin and Huxley. There 
have been explorers of the deeps of spiritual 
experience as well as explorers of the mysteries 
of the stars and the molecules. To get ac- 
quainted with them, live with them, learn to 
love them, to consider carefully their visions 
which lie beyond the reach of our dull im- 

139 



I'HE TEMPLE 

aginations, and to count our life well spent 
in the endeavor to shape some faint image 
of these visions in our actual world, is the 
first step toward that acquaintance with the in- 
visible and the eternal which Paul calls faith. 
We can find in Browning's "Christmas Eve" 
inspiration to a larger spirit of catholicity; 
in Tennyson's "Quest of the Holy Grail" a 
summons to a nobler pilgrimage; in Lowell's 
"Commemoration Ode" a call to enlist in a 
more unselfish service; in Whittier's " Eternal 
Goodness" a glimpse of the All-Father which 
will at least create in us a desire to know him 
better. Nor shall we find in literature any 
better interpretation of these spiritual visions 
than in portions of the Bible, nor anywhere 
in the Bible a better interpretation than in 
the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. 

The real and radical remedy for scepti- 
cism is a sincere, continuous, and persistent 
endeavor to acquaint ourselves with these 
ideals, and to shape some faint image of 
these visions of truth and beauty in our lives. 



140 



XIII 
THE REASON 



XIII 
THE REASON 

Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings ; prove 
all things, ; hold fast that which is good. 

*T"TTE are counselled by Paul to keep alive 
our spiritual nature and to honor those 
who possess it in larger measure than our- 
selves. But we are also cautioned not to 
accept as true all that the prophets say, nor 
even all that we think we have experienced. 
We are to test both their visions and ours 
and hold fast only those which stand the test 
of practical reason. If to believe that men 
can directly and immediately take cognizance 
of realities which the senses cannot perceive 
is to be a mystic, then Paul is a mystic. But 
if to believe that what this inward sense de- 
clares is to be accepted with an unquestioning 
faith, that this voice within is the infallible 
voice of God to be followed without doubt and 

143 



THE TEMPLE 

without demanding credentials — if this is 
to be a mystic, Paul is not a mystic. If to 
believe that every such inward testimony, 
whether from our own experience or from the 
experience of others, is to be brought before 
the tribunal of reason and then investigated, 
that no faith is so sound and no tradition so 
ancient that it may be accepted without 
question — if this is to be a rationalist, then 
Paul was a rationalist. If to believe that 
the reason is the only faculty for the ascertain- 
ment of truth, that we are to entertain no 
opinion as true unless it has been demon- 
strated by the reason, that all convictions 
must be reasoned convictions — if this is to 
be a rationalist, then Paul was not a ration- 
alist. For, I repeat, the four aphorisms, 
Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesy- 
ings; prove all things; hold fast that which 
is good, constitute in aphoristic form Paul's 
philosophy. Man has a spirit which imme- 
diately and directly perceives the invisible 
world; let him not suffer it to be paralyzed. 
There are men of spiritual genius who pos- 

144 



THE REASON 

sess this spiritual power in an unusual degree ; 
let us not despise, but respect, their testimony 
as to what they have seen and known. But 
let us not take either their experiences or our 
own as final; let us carefully consider them 
and accept and act upon them only as they 
are reasonable. In deciding on their reason- 
ableness, the final test is their practical effi- 
ciency. Are they beneficial ? Do they pro- 
mote our welfare and the welfare of man- 
kind ? 

Much of our knowledge is derived from 
our senses. We know, or think we know, 
what we see, or think we see. But our senses 
sometimes deceive us. We are subject to 
hallucinations. If we are in doubt whether 
we have really seen what we think we have 
seen, or if others are in doubt concerning the 
matter, reason is called in to decide the ques- 
tion and rectify the error, if error there has 
been. When, for example, a traveller re- 
ports that the Oriental juggler, standing on 
the open ground, with nothing but the sky 
above him, throws a rope up into the air and 

l 145 



THE TEMPLE 

then climbs up it hand over hand and dis- 
appears from sight, the scientist discredits 
the tale. It is not reasonable; that is, it 
does not tally with what we know of the laws 
of nature. The scientist does not aver that 
anything is impossible; he only avers that 
some things are more improbable than others. 
In this case he contends that it is more prob- 
able that the traveller is mistaken than that 
the law of gravitation has been suspended. 
So when he reads in an ancient record that 
Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and 
it obeyed him, the scientist says at once: 
This is not reasonable. It is more probable 
that the effect was produced by a quasi 
mirage, or that the expression is a poetical 
one used to express the apparently intermi- 
nable day, or that the record is wholly mis- 
taken, than that the earth stopped for an 
appreciable time in its revolution on its axis. 
In both cases the scientist is following Paul's 
counsel : he is proving — that is, testing by 
his reason — the story which is brought to 
him; and, in each case, he rejects it because 

146 



THE REASON 

it seems to him more credible that the witness 
is in error, or his meaning is misapprehended, 
than that the laws of nature were reversed 
or suspended. But it is quite conceivable 
that the testimony to the feat of the Oriental 
juggler or to the apparently lengthened day 
should be so overwhelming that the court 
would be compelled to accept it. In that 
case the reason would be applied to find some 
explanation of the phenomenon not incon- 
sistent with the assumption of science that 
nature is subject to law, or, to phrase this 
differently, that God is a God of order and 
not of anarchy. 

As the physical senses are sometimes mis- 
taken, so sometimes is the inward or spiritual 
sense. Personally, I doubt whether the latter 
is any more frequently mistaken in its testi- 
mony than the former ; whether, that is, hallu- 
cinations of the spirit are any more common 
than hallucinations of the senses. The reason 
why the spiritual sense is less trusted is partly 
because we easily distinguish between what 
we have seen and what we conclude from 

147 



THE TEMPLE 

what we have seen, and with difficulty dis- 
tinguish between what we have experienced 
and what we conclude from what we have 
experienced. However this may be, Paul 
would have us bring all our spiritual experi- 
ences, no less than our sensuous observations, 
into the court of reason, and subject them 
there to investigation. The inward sense is 
no more infallible than the outward sense. 
Both are to be tested and their testimony 
confirmed or their errors corrected. For 
example : 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 
Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
He thinks he was not made to die; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 

In this verse Tennyson gives expression to 
what is the nearly universal instinct of man- 
kind. This is not merely a hope of life after 
death; it is still more a conscious experi- 
ence of a life that is more than a mere 
physical phenomenon. Man thinks that he 
is more than a machine; that he exercises 
some control over his bodily organs; that 

148 



THE REASON 

they are his servants, not his master; and 
therefore he does not believe that when 
the servant ceases to obey the master and 
dissolves in dust and ashes, the master ceases 
to exist. Is this consciousness of continuing 
life, of a life that transcends and in some 
degree controls the body, trustworthy? Is 
this faith in a present, and this hope for a 
future, immortality reasonable? The phi- 
losopher does not ask the reason to demon- 
strate the truth of this faith and the sound- 
ness of this hope. He brings this faith and 
this hope before the court of reason and asks, 
Is this reasonable — that is, is it able to 
stand the inquisition of the reason? Taking 
life as it is, is there more to sanction the 
hypothesis of mortality or the hypothesis of 
immortality? And if he finds that this in- 
stinct is not unreasonable, if it is not dis- 
proved by the reason, he concludes that it 
is no hallucination and he accepts it and 
trusts it. 

So, again, Browning's declaration, 

God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith on that. 
149 



THE TEMPLE 

is the expression of a conscious human in- 
stinct. This instinct, as Browning expresses 
it, is not so universal as the instinct of im- 
mortality. But that there is a Person or 
there are Persons who are superior to human- 
ity, that among them there is One who may 
properly be called Supreme — a Jehovah, or M 
a Jove, or a Wotan, or a Brahm, or a Great 
Spirit — and that he is a moral being who is , 
governed by considerations of justice, if not 
actuated by a spirit of pure benevolence, is 
the faith which underlies all religions — that is, 
which underlies the consciousness of the hu- 
man race; for religion, the sense of depend- 
ence upon and reverence for a supernatural 
Being, is as universal as the race. There are 
probably more blind persons in the world 
than persons wholly without any religious 
experience; more, that is, who are not con- 
scious of the light than there are who are 
not conscious of some superhuman existence. 
And the higher the ethical and spiritual de- 
velopment of the age and the race, the more 
benign is the conception of this Supreme I 

150 



THE REASON 

Being. Is this a consciousness to be trusted, 
or is it an hallucination of the spirit? Is it 
only the blind who see, and are the sighted 
all in error? The philosopher does not ask 
reason to demonstrate to him the existence 
of a God. He brings this universal con- 
sciousness of a Supreme Being before the 
court of reason and asks, Is it reasonable or 
unreasonable? Is belief in a reasoned crea- 
tion or in a fortuitous concourse of atoms the 
more rational explanation of the universe ? 
Is belief in a moral order or a moral chaos 
more consonant with the phenomena of life? 
Is belief in a righteous Power that makes 
for righteousness sustained or negatived by a 
study of the historic development of man- 
kind ? Does history look as though life were 
made up of a lot of unmastered wills playing , 
at cross-purposes, or as though behind all 
these heterogeneous personalities there were 
a great Personality working out some great , 
design by us not well understood ? 

So again when, in the declaration that 
"Spirit with spirit can meet," the poet sums 

151 



THE TEMPLE 

up and interprets the concurrent experience 
of mankind. Desire for worship and joy in 
worship are more common than desire for, 
and joy in, art. Those who have found in- 
spiration in prayer outnumber probably a 
hundred to one those who have found inspi- 
ration in music. The devout soul is as sure 
that he has been talking with some invisible 
presence in the quiet of his chamber as he is 
a little later that he is talking with his friend 
in the parlor. Prayer is not a hypothesis 
demonstrated to him like a theorem in geom- 
etry. 

I cried unto the Lord with my voice, 
And he heard me out of his holy hill. * 
I laid me down and slept; 
I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. 

They who testify to a like experience are in 
number like the sand on the seashore for 
multitude. They are uncountable. Is this an 
hallucination of the spirit ? or is it a reality ? 
Paul's answer to that question is perfectly 
fearless. Test it, he says; summon it into 
the court of reason and let reason judge. If 

152 



THE REASON 

the modern sceptic, with his theory of auto- 
suggestion, had lived in Paul's time, one 
cannot conceive that Paul would have evaded 
or avoided this counter-hypothesis. Bring, 
he w T ould have said, your explanation of the 
experience of prayer into court with mine and 
let the reason judge between us. 

''The greatest and, perhaps, sole use of 
philosophy is, after all, merely negative, and, 
instead of discovering truth, has only the 
modest merit of preventing error. 'V This 
sentence, which is attributed to Immanuel 
Kant, is also Paul's conception of the func- 
tion of philosophy. It does not furnish us 
with the facts of life. The facts of the outer 
life are testified to by the physical senses; the 
facts of the inner life are testified to by the 
spiritual senses. But these witnesses are some- 
times mistaken. They sometimes seem to con- 
tradict each other. They must be brought 
into court, put on the witness-stand, examined 
and cross-examined. Reason is not the wit- 
ness. Reason is the judge who tests the wit-^ 
nesses. The witnesses are the senses and the 

153 



THE TEMPLE 

intuition; the one observes the world with- 
out, the other experiences the life within. 

There are several tests which the reason 
employs in the examination of witnesses. 
The agreeing testimony of many witnesses to 
a phenomenon seen goes far to disprove the 
theory that the seeing perception is an hallu- 
cination of the senses; the agreeing testimony 
of many witnesses to a life experienced goes 
far to disprove the theory that the experience 
is an hallucination of the spirit. The excep- 
tional we doubt more readily than the uni- 
versal. But in religion the final test of every 
vision is its effect on the character. The 
test of philosophy, says Professor William 
James, is, Does it work well ? This is Paul's 
test of religious faith. If this is pragma- 
tism, he is a pragmatist. It is also the test 
of practical science. The proof of wireless 
telegraphy is the message sent from station 
to station without a wire. The proof of aerial 
navigation is the voyage on the aeroplane. 
The object of religion is the education and 
elevation of man. The test of every vision 

154 



THE REASON 

is its effect on the education and elevation of 
man. Not what we think its effect will be, 
but what in fact its effect is. This is only to 
say what Christ said, "By their fruits ye shall 
know them." What has been the effect on 
human character of faith in immortality, in 
God, in Jesus Christ as the supreme mani- 
festation of God, in the reality of communion 
with God? To attempt to answer this ques- 
tion would be to write the history of Christi- 
anity. It must suffice here to say that the 
vices of Christendom are common to human- 
ity; its virtues are largely its own. Cruelty 
and oppression, fraud and deceit, drunkenness 
and prostitution, are a part of the world's 
history. What is not a part of the world's 
history, but only part of the history of Chris- 
tendom, is the abolition of slavery, the eman- 
cipation of government, the creation of a 
sense of commercial honor which has made 
possible banks and a post-office and a credit 
system, hospitals and asylums for the un- 
fortunate, reformatories and penitentiaries for 
the criminal, and a temperance movement 

155 



THE TEMPLE 

which has promoted in the individual and 
in the community the power of self-control. 
What is common to humanity is a poignant 
sense of remorse for sin and a resulting sys- 
tem of sacrifices and penances to atone for 
sin. What is peculiar to Christendom is an I 
experience of forgiveness of sin, which has 
changed worship from a pitiful cry for mercy 
into a joyful song of thanksgiving. 

The test of a religious faith is, Does it 
work well? The spirit and the teachings 
of Jesus Christ have worked well wherever 
they have been tried. The failures in Chris- 
tendom can all be easily traced to the im- 
perfect acceptance of those teachings and 
the imperfect realization of that spirit. 



156 



XIV 
LOVE 



XIV 
LOVE 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soui, and with all thy mind, and with all 
thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the 
second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself. 

~Y OVE has many phases : love of husband 
*-^ and wife, parent and child, friend and 
friend, neighbor and neighbor, are not the 
same. Love does not always mean congenial 
fellowship. There is no reason for imagining 
that the Good Samaritan found the despoiled 
traveller an agreeable comrade; certainly 
Jesus did not find comradeship in Judas 
Iscariot, and yet it is said that, having loved 
his own, he loved them to the end. 

There is in all the various inflections of 
love one common element; if that is pres- 
ent, love is not lacking; if that is lacking, 
what we sometimes call love is but a spurious 

159 



THE TEMPLE 

counterfeit. That common element is a sin- 
cere desire for the welfare of the loved one. 
No passion of the husband for his wife can 
serve as a substitute for this simple desire for 
her welfare dominating his life and controlling 
his actions. When the pseudo-reformer tells 
us that marriage without love is a profanation 
and that when love ceases the marriage tie 
should be dissolved, what does he mean? 
Does he mean that when passion ceases, the 
marriage tie should be dissolved? That is 
not true. Passion does not sanctify mar- 
riage; marriage sanctifies passion. Or does 
he mean that when this simple and sincere 
desire for each other's welfare ceases, the tie , 
should be dissolved ? But neither has a right 
to allow that desire to cease. Passion is 
spontaneous; and it is often transcient. But 
love, the love that suffers long and still is 
kind, never should be allowed to die. It is 
immune, not from pain, but from sickness 
and death. The indulgent mother who can- 
not bear to deny her child any wish nor to 
enforce upon him any command thinks she 

160 



LOVE 

loves him too much. No ! She does not 
truly love him at all, because she does not 
desire his welfare. Kisses and caresses can 
never take the place of this masterful motive 
of true, helpful service. This motive may be 
accompanied by emotions which bring the 
holiest joy or the bitterest sorrow; but if it is 
not strong enough to endure the bitterest sor- 
row, if it is not stronger than the most tumul- 
tuous joy, it is not true love ; certainly it lacks 
something of being perfect love. 

To love my neighbor as myself is not to 
rejoice in his companionship, to find in him 
a congenial comrade, to share with him the 
same pleasures and the same sorrows, to en-' 
joy the same pictures or books or music, to 
hold the same opinions, to live on the same 
intellectual and moral plane. It is to regard 
his welfare as of equal importance to me with 
my own. To love my enemy is not to be 
moved by a passionate devotion toward him; 
it is not even moderately to like him. It is 
to be moved by his enmity to wish him not 
evil, but good. Paul has defined what is 

M 161 



THE TEMPLE 

meant by loving one's enemy: "If thine 
enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give 
him drink." Christ has defined what he 
means by loving one's enemy: "But I say 
unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and 
pray for them which despitefully use you, and 
persecute you." 

The law of love thus interpreted, the law 
that we are to regard our neighbor's welfare 
as we regard our own, is the condition, and 
the only condition, of true abiding social 
order. He who regards his neighbor's wel- 
fare as his own will not oppress him, nor rob 
him, nor vilify him. This is what Paul 
means by the saying, "Let love be without 
hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave 
to that which is good. In love of the brethren 
be tenderly affectioned one to another; in 
honor preferring one another." If the la- 
borer regarded his employer's welfare as his 
own, and the employer regarded the working- 
man's welfare as his own, there would be an 
end to strikes and lockouts; the controversies 

162 



LOVE 

would be kindly controversies and easily ad- 
justed. If the maid regarded the welfare of 
the mistress as her own, and the mistress re- 
garded the welfare of the maid as her own, 
the domestic problem would cease to be "the 
greatest plague of life." If the merchant 
regarded the customer's welfare as his own, 
and the customer regarded the merchant's 
welfare as his own, there would be an end to 
"it is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer, 
and goeth away and boasteth." If the white 
man regarded the negro's welfare as his own, 
the race problem would be easily solved. 
Love would no more mean social comrade- 
ship between the races than it means social 
comradeship between individuals; but it 
would mean justice and fair dealing. If 
each nation regarded the other nations' wel- 
fare as its own, war would cease and we could 
beat our swords into ploughshares and our 
spears into pruning-hooks. In individual 
and in international relations we would no 
longer attempt to make a profit out of one 
another's necessities. Whether our labor sys- 

163 



THE TEMPLE 

tern was slavery, or feudalism, or capitalism, 
or Socialism, or some other system yet to be 
discovered, would be, not a matter of no im- 
portance, but a matter of secondary impor- 
tance. If the master regarded his slaves' 
welfare as his own, slavery would be not un- 
endurable. This is the meaning of Paul's 
much-debated letter to Philemon, sent by the 
hand of Philemon's slave Onesimus: "If 
then thou countest me as a partner, receive 
him as myself." It was because the early 
Christians regarded the welfare of their slaves 
as their own that slavery was gradually abol- 
ished, without a war of emancipation and 
without even an industrial revolution. This 
spirit of mutual regard for each other's wel- 
fare is more important to social order and 
social welfare than any change in the social 
order, however important. In truth, the main 
question covering every proposed change in 
the social order is this, Will it tend to promote 
the spirit of social brotherhood ? k 

To love God .with all the heart, and soul, 
and mind, and strength is to make God's 

164 



LOVE 

welfare — that is, the progress and prosperity 
of his work in the world — one's supreme desire. / 
As to love one's neighbor as one's self is the 
secret of social order, so to love God with all 
the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength 
is the secret of all high, holy, and joyous liv- 
ing. To love God is not to sing praises to 
him, nor to utter prayers to him, nor to offer 
sacrifices to him, nor to make contributions 
from one's purse to his Church. This may 
help or it may hinder. It helps when it pro- 
motes the love that is service ; it hinders when 
it takes the place of the love that is service. 

The history of the child in the family is in 
microcosm the history of the human race in 
the world. The child in the cradle knows 
nothing of the world, of its fellows, or of itself. 
It knows not how to use its eyes, or hands, 
or feet. It knows nothing of the rights of 
persons or property ; of the duty of truth and 
the evil of falsehood; of the dangers of self- 
indulgence and the necessity of self-control. 
The parents must teach it that it is in a world 
of law, must help it to ascertain what those 

165 



THE TEMPLE 

laws are, must train it to habits of obedience 
to law. Gradually, very gradually, it grows 
up to take possession of itself and of its 
world. From its earliest infancy God has 
been training the human race. Gradually 
under that training it has been emerging 
from a purely animal condition into one of 
spiritual mastership. Gradually it has been 
developed into a spiritual consciousness of its 
Father and its own divine nature. Gradually 
it is beginning to see that the end of life is that 
it may become worthy to be its Father's com- 
panion and enter into full fellowship with him. 
To devote one's self to working with the Father 
to accomplish the Father's ends — this is to 
love God; to devote one's self wholly and 
unreservedly to this work is to love him 
supremely. Says Hegel, "God governs the 
world; the actual working of his government 
— the carrying out of his plan — is the his- 
tory of the world." 1 To join with God in 
carrying out his plan, so to join with him in 
this work that it shall inspire all one's enthu- 

1 Hegel, "Philosophy of History," p. 38. 
166 



LOVE 



siasm, determine finally and forever the direc- 
tion of one's life, employ all one's intellectual 
energies, and both create and employ one's 
powers, is to love God with all the heart, and 
with all the soul, and with all the mind, and 
with all the strength. This is what Paul 
means by the saying, " God was in Christ f 
reconciling the world to himself, and hath 
committed unto us the word of reconcilia- 
tion." By his manifestation of himself in the , 
life and career of Jesus of Nazareth, God has ; 
made clear to men what is his heart's desire 
for his children, and to them he has intrusted 
the carrying on to its completion this work of 
lifting men up into such companionship with 
him that he shall be in very truth the Father 
of whom every family in heaven and on earth 
is named. That is the end of evolution, the , 
meaning of redemption — one is the scien- 
tist's word, the other is the word of the theo- 
logian for the same historic process — a new 
humanity in fellowship with God, a new social 
order which shall be pervaded by righteous- > 
ness or the spirit which regards another's 

167 



THE TEMPLE 

welfare as one regards his own, by peace or 
universal good-will, founded on righteousness, 
and by joy or universal welfare growing out 
of righteousness and peace, — all three, right- 
eousness, peace and joy — the spontaneous fruit 
of holiness, that is, healthfulness of spirit. 1 

When one understands history as Hegel 
understands it, when he thus enters into life 
as Paul interprets it, life takes on a new aspect. 
Such a one never thinks of asking, Is life 
worth living ? Drudgery disappears, the sec- 
ular becomes sacred, the insignificant shares 
the greatness of work to which it contributes. 
The compositor shares with the editor in the 
greatness of journalistic service; the porter 
shares with the banker in providing the com- 
munity with what is a necessary medium for 
the mutual exchange of services; the brake- 
man sees himself a co-laborer with the great 
corporation in making the highway which 
binds East and West and North and South 

1 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but right- 
eousness, and peace, and joy in holiness of spirit. (Romans 
xiv. 17.) Not the Holy Spirit : the definite article is wanting 
in the original. 

168 



LOVE 

together; the maid realizes that the health 
and happiness of the community rests on its 
homes, and the health and happiness of the 
homes on the kitchen. 

With this apprehension of the greatness of 
all work because it is work for God comes 
the added comprehension that it is work with 
God. For Thomas a Kempis's declaration, 
"The fathers were strangers to the world, but 
near to God and were his familiar friends," 
the worker for God substitutes, "I will be a 
friend to the world, because near to God and 
his familiar friend." To bear burdens, meet 
obstacles, confront and conquer dangers, en- 
dure patiently the frets and worries of the 
world becomes a part of the ministry of life 
— the more to be done, the more to be en- 
dured, the greater the joy of the service. The 
petty problems of life — of dress and food, 
social prestige and business success — slip 
away, or take their place as part of the great 
problem how to do one's work valiantly and 
well. The insoluble mystery of life ceases to be 
depressing. Since in its entirety it is too great 

169 



THE TEMPLE 

for our solution, we grow content to study it 
item by item, and solve the parts that are set 
before us, as a subordinate engineer might 
figure out the problem given to him by his 
superior without attempting to map out the 
whole enterprise. The greatness of the work, 
to which one can contribute but an inappre- 
ciable trifle, inspires an enthusiasm com- 
mensurate with the work — not with our in- 
considerable share — and makes it possible for 
one to put into his own special work, however 
humble, not only his strength and his mind, 
but the whole of his heart. Every new problem 
presented, every new difficulty encountered, 
every new experience of intellectual dulness, 
spiritual inertia, or selfish shortsightedness in 
his neighbor, adds to the flame of his ardent 
ambition of service. If any reader does not un- 
derstand what I mean, or thinks me extrava- 
gant, let him read the life of General Armstrong 
or of Dr. Grenfell, and then he will understand. 
The body is the temple of a holy spirit 
which we have from God, whose offspring 
we are. To use our ears and eyes to receive 

170 



LOVE 

impressions of truth and purity — impres- 
sions that will fit us for service ; to make our 
words the expression of a real life of the spirit 
and a minister to the real life of others; to 
put our hand with energy to what work Provi- 
dence puts in our way;y to keep on our way 
undaunted by any fear, unhalted by any dis- 
aster; to make our appetites and passions the 
servants, not the master, of the soul ; to people 
our imagination with ideals which will in- 
spire to higher and holier living; to recognize 
the authority of conscience as a lawgiver; 
and to make the life and teachings of Jesus 
Christ the standard for our conscience; to 
look at the things which are unseen and 
eternal as well as at the things which are seen 
and temporal ; to use the reason to correct the 
errors of our vision not as a substitute for it; 
to regard the welfare of our neighbor as we 
regard our own; and to make the progress 
and prosperity of God's work in the world 
our supreme and final concern, the secret of an 
unquenchable enthusiasm and the reservoir 
of an inexhaustible strength — this is religion. 

171 



OTHER BOOKS BY DR. LYMAN ABBOTT 

The Great Companion 

Cloth, i2r,io, $1.00 net 

" Dr. Abbott can always be depended upon to write something at 
once spiritually helpful and artistically satisfying. This combina- 
tion freights his work with a double appeal, an appeal to the heart 
on the one hand, an appeal to the intellect on the other." — Book 
News, 

"In nothing that Dr. Abbott has ever published does his singularly 
lucid and felicitous power of statement appear to better advantage 
than here." — Chicago Evening Post. 



The Other Room 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 net 

"The beautiful faith expressed in this little volume cannot but 
uplift every Christian that reads it, whether he be Baptist, Catho- 
lic, Presbyterian, or Methodist." — Christian Advocate. 

" We have seldom met with a more succinct, penetrating, and 
gravely comforting exposition of the theological dogma of resur- 
rection in the nearly scientific language of the higher criticism." — 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 

" Few more Christian and comforting books have been written than 
this, and we trust that its message will carry cheer to many." — 
Baltimore Sun. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



By FRANCIS G. PEABODY 

Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in Harvard University 

Jesus Christ and the Christian Character 

AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS IN ITS RELATION 
TO SOME OF THE MORAL PROBLEMS OF PERSONAL LIFE 

" One of the most striking features of modern addresses and ser- 
mons is their practical character. . . . This is set forth very 
emphatically in one of the most remarkable books in the religious 
literature ... a study of Christian ethics which is truly inspiring." 
— Independent, 

Cloth, $1.50 net 

Jesus Christ and the Social Question 

AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS IN ITS RELATION 
TO SOME PROBLEMS OF MODERN SOCIAL LIFE 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 

The Religion of an Educated Man 

RELIGION AS EDUCATION — CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO THE SCHOLAR 
— KNOWLEDGE AND SERVICE 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 net 

The Approach to the Social Question 

Just ready 

By the Rev. WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH 

Professor of Church History in Rochester Theological Seminary 

Christianity and the Social Crisis 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

"It is of the sort to make its readers feel that the book was 
bravely written to free an honest man's heart; that conscientious 
scholarship, hard thinking, and the determination to tell the truth 
as he sees it, have wrought it out and enriched it; that it is written 
in a clear, incisive style; that stern passion and gentle sentiment 
stir at times among the words, and keen wit and grim humor flash 
here and there in the turn of a sentence; and that there is a noble 
end in view. If the hope be too confident, if there be once in a 
while a step taken beyond the line of justice into indignation, if a 
quaint old prejudice or even animosity bustles to the front in an 
emergency — no matter. It is a book to like, to learn from, and, 
though the theme be sad and serious, to be charmed with." — 
N. Y. Times Sat. Review of Books. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



By CARL HILTY 

Professor in the University of Bern, Switzerland 

Happiness Cloth, i2mo, $i.2§ net 

"The author makes his appeal not to discussion but to life." — 
New York Times. 

The Steps of Life 

Further Essays on Happiness Cloth, i2mo, $1.2$ net 

At rare intervals a man will appear to whom it is given to see 
more deeply into life than his fellows. Such a man Carl Hilty is. 

By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

The Quest of Happiness- Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

" The volume teems with readable sentences, stimulating thought, 
quotable maxims, and apt quotations. The Christian spirit per- 
vades the pages." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

By R. J. CAMPBELL 

Minister of the City Temple, London 

The New Theology Cloth, 8vo, $1.50 net 

An outline of what one man in a London pulpit is doing towards 
interpreting the gospel in terms consistent with modern science 
and historical criticism. 

By W. H. P. FAUNCE 

President of Brown University 

The Educational Ideal in the Ministry 

Cloth, izmo, $1.25 net 
" With a largeness of vision and soundness of advice that are 
notable the whole book treats of the minister's unequalled respon- 
sibilities and opportunities in a time of changing views." — New 
York Observer. 

By HENRY S. NASH 

Ethics and Revelation Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

" This is a great book. It is a poem in prose, a study in English. 
. . . Every word of the six lectures should be read by thoughtful 
men of the day, ministers and laymen, believers and sceptics." — 
John H. Vincent. 

The Atoning Life Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 net 

" A small book but a great one, in which deep and patient study 
issues in such terse expression that one should willingly give it 
two or three readings to absorb its fulness." — Outlook. 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



By HENRY C. KING 

President of Oberlin College 

The Laws of Friendship, Human and Divine 

A summing up in brief compass and in a most winning manner of Dr. 
King's well-known philosophy of the end of life as the cultivation of 
friendship with God and man. 

Haverford Library Lectures Cloth, i2nto, $1.23 net 

The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life 

As more than one reader comments, this frank discussion of religious 
perplexities marks a notable and hopeful advance in recent years in 
rationality, in charity, in catholicity, in spirituality, and in real religious 
effectiveness. 

Clothy i2mo y $1.50 net 

Personal and Ideal Elements in Education 

"I am reading it with great profit. It is a magnificent utterance." — 
William F. Anderson, Secretary, Board of Education of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church. 

Cloth, i2tno, $1.30 net 

Reconstruction in Theology 

" Its pages represent what is nearly, if not actually, the highwater mark 
of skill and success in blending a fearless yet discriminating progressive- 
ness with a loyal conservatism in theology." — The Congregationalist. 

Cloth, i2nio, $1.50 net 

Theology and the Social Consciousness 

" A valuable contribution to current discussion. ... It is not scholas- 
tic ; it is not phrased in the technical language of the schools ; the 
thoughtful layman will readily understand it." — The Outlook. 

Cloth, crown 8vo y $1.23 net 

Rational Living 

"As a constructive piece of work, making religiously available the 
results of contemporary researches in mind, the value of ' Rational 
Living' is tremendous. At this time particularly the religious teacher 
needs just what he finds in ' Rational Living ' — a book sure, one thinks, 
to quicken the minister and his sermons and his people." — ARTHUR 
R. TAYLOR, Rector, Trinity Memorial Church, Warren, Pennsylvania. 

Cloth, T2mo, $1.23 net 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesrcr n x ide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAP* RVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
1724)779-2111 



HQV 4 I90» 



'* 
*% 



V ICOfST. DEL. TO CfiT. OIV. 

. r;ov a 



